Trump Stuns Time Magazine With Outlandish Claim When They Confront Him on Zero Trade Deals

President Donald Trump drew a double-take from his Time Magazine interviewers with an outlandish claim when they challenged him for not having announced a single trade deal since his tariff rollout.

The magazine published a profile of Trump pegged to the 100th day of his second term in office, which included an interview conducted by Time Senior Political Correspondent Eric Cortellessa and Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs that contained many newsworthy exchanges.

One extended passage about trade began with a reference to Peter Navarro’s claim, in a Meet the Press interview, that the U.S. could make  “90 deals in 90 days” during Trump’s pause on tariffs.

When confronted with the fact that there are “zero deals so far,” Trump claimed “I’ve made 200 deals”:

TIME: Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We’re now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There’s zero deals so far. Why is that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, there’s many deals.

TIME: When are they going to be announced?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You have to understand, I’m dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals.

TIME: Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ve made 200 deals.

TIME: You’ve made 200 deals?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 100%.

TIME: Can you share with whom?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. Some have been horrible to us. Some have been okay. Nobody’s been great. Nobody’s been great. Everybody took advantage of us. What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else. For instance, do they have the VAT system in play? Do they charge us tariffs? How much are they charging us? How much have they been charging us? Many, many different factors, right. How are we being treated by that country? And then I will set a tariff. Are we paying for their military? You know, as an example, we have Korea. We pay billions of dollars for the military. Japan, billions for those and others. But that, I’m going to keep us a separate item, the paying of the military. Germany, we have 50,000 soldiers—

TIME: I’m just curious, why don’t you announce these deals that you’ve solidified?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I would say, over the next three to four weeks, and we’re finished, by the way.

TIME: You’re finished?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’ll be finished.

TIME: Oh, you will be finished in three to four weeks.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’ll be finished. Now, some countries may come back and ask for an adjustment, and I’ll consider that, but I’ll basically be, with great knowledge, setting—ready? We’re a department store, a giant department store, the biggest department store in history. Everybody wants to come in and take from us. They’re going to come in and they’re going to pay a price for taking our treasure, for taking our jobs, for doing all of these things. But what I’m doing with the tariffs is people are coming in, and they’re building at levels you’ve never seen before. We have $7 trillion of new plants, factories and other things, investment coming into the United States. And if you look back at past presidents, nobody was anywhere near that. And this is in three months.

Trump extended the “department store” metaphor throughout the interview.

Trump’s “200 deals” claim roughly matches the number of countries that were included on the chart he used when he unveiled the tariff scheme, and it seems he may have been crediting himself with “deals” when he imposed the tariffs that he has now paused.