Catherine Rampell: Claims of Trump Admin. Tariff Deals with Countries Feels Like ‘Fake Girlfriend in Canada Vibes’

EXCERPT:

RAMPELL: "I am willing to bet at least the vast majority of those tariffs will be in effect. Even when Howard Lutnick talks about this mystery country that we have a deal with, it kind of has those fake girlfriend in Canada vibes, if you know what I mean, except probably this is like not someone in Canada that he’s negotiating with, if it’s anyone at all. What my main question is, why do markets keep falling for this? Because we’ve seen these fake-outs, this kind of vaporware over and over and over again, where Trump says he’s about to have a breakthrough and then it doesn’t materialize. Somebody in the White House will strategically leak news of some sort of rollback of tariffs or negotiations, or the Treasury secretary will say to a private audience that these tariffs are not sustainable, and therefore, everybody assumes that we’re going to go back to normal. And nothing approaching normal seems to be in the offing."