The Trump administration is knee-deep into what officials call a “whole-of-government” approach to landing as many trade deals as possible before its 90-day tariff pause expires. The push is happening at the highest levels of government, with President Donald Trump getting personally involved in negotiations with allies like Japan and Italy.
But former and current U.S. trade officials tell NOTUS it’s highly unlikely that the staff at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, has enough time or resources to secure traditional trade agreements, in which negotiations typically span months, if not years.
“Just scheduling all these initial negotiations in 90 days will be a formidable challenge,” said a former and longtime USTR negotiator. “Negotiating 75-plus bespoke trade deals in 90 days is unrealistic.”
What many expect instead is a series of shorter trade deals focused on “high-level” issues with less specificity.
“Count me as skeptical as if the deals are going to be meaningful,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University professor and former longtime U.S. trade official.
The unprecedented sprint to make dozens of deals has led to a crunch at USTR, an intentionally lean agency that’s typically north of 240 full-time workers and congressionally mandated to lead trade negotiations. The small agency is home to a highly specialized workforce whose talents don’t exist in many other places in the federal government or private sector.
“They’re busy,” said one former USTR official who’s still in frequent communication with their former colleagues. They’re overwhelmed, said another. They’re nervous, said a third.
Nearly all the almost dozen former officials whom NOTUS spoke with said that while some at USTR might not agree with what the administration is doing, there’s a general excitement at the agency over how much work there is to do — energy that didn’t exist during the Biden administration, they say. And those former officials fully expect the team, supported by other parts of the government, to rise to the task.
But there’s skepticism over how much even energized staff can quickly accomplish. One former official who left USTR recently told NOTUS they did not believe USTR had the staff to do more than a few deals — including with China, India, the EU and then USMCA negotiations — before running out of staff to do anything else.
“What happens when the Japanese and the Koreans and the Thais and the Vietnamese show up and they all want to negotiate?” they said.
The issue isn’t purely hypothetical. Back in the 2000s, USTR was simultaneously involved in two massive negotiations: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which stretched resources to the brink.
Michael Beeman, the former assistant U.S. trade representative, said it would be “very possible” for USTR to do “two or three” traditional trade-agreement negotiations at the same time.
“But it would be hard to do much more than that in any given moment, basically,” he said.
Some of the officials who have worked on trade deals in the past said they also expect many of the negotiations to require timeline extensions, which are reserved for countries that have negotiated in good faith.
“If you had some prioritization and appropriate sequencing, and the scope, the level of detail was appropriate, you could get done as many deals as countries are serious about,” said Dan Mullaney, the former assistant U.S. trade representative for Europe and the Middle East.
A USTR spokesperson said the agency is ready for this moment. “USTR is confident that it can conclude meaningful deals that break down tariff and non-tariff barriers,” they said. “The agency is built for this and has been moving forward on the President’s trade agenda since Day One, including on potential deals with trading partners.”
Trump’s goal to reorder America’s manufacturing industry through punitive tariffs has sent shockwaves through the country’s financial systems. Using emergency power, Trump instituted a 10% baseline tariff on all countries, with some receiving much higher rates. Trump’s pause on most of the highest rates, which came after days of market panic, shifted the way forward to a focus on striking deals with foreign countries that would benefit the U.S. and lessen trade deficits. Just this week, the administration is expected to meet with trade negotiators from South Korea, Thailand and potentially India.
The president has continued to defend his tariff plan, despite growing concerns of long-lasting economic damage, including the devaluation of the dollar. He has likened America to a “big, beautiful department store” that all nations want a part of, adding that if countries don’t make a deal now, they might be penalized in the future.
Trade deals are time-consuming and costly, often taking years of exploration and negotiation before coming in for congressional approval. Trump’s signature trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, took about 19 months from the official start of negotiations to the formal agreement. And a revision of a steel and automotive provision between the U.S. and South Korea took more than eight months to sort out.
One former trade official told NOTUS a trade team could typically consist of anywhere between 10 people and 40 people, depending on how much support is needed from the interagency team supporting negotiations, including the Treasury, Commerce, Labor and Energy departments.
While Trump’s sprawling cuts to the federal workforce have not significantly affected USTR, other agencies have shed substantial staff. The Energy Department has lost thousands of staff and more steep cuts are expected at the Labor and Agriculture departments. The broad DOGE cuts have also left the small USTR shop feeling the effects of low morale that have set in across the government, according to two sources.
“The superpower of the agency is this leanness and it’s talent and knowledge, basically, to be able to do these kinds of negotiations,” Beeman said. “Very little in the way of traditional trade agreements and negotiations was happening during the Biden administration. So you’re going very much from that to a fire hose kind of situation.”
But USTR is under a ticking clock. Though Trump has said publicly the administration is in “no rush” to clinch a deal with the likes of Japan or Italy, it’s clear the administration is looking for wins. And Trump historically hasn’t been the most patient president.
“There was often time pressure to try and move things as quickly as possible,” said a former USTR official who worked during Trump’s first term. “This president is extremely interested in the details and in how these negotiations are going.”
One silver lining, three people told NOTUS, is that Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, is well liked at USTR, with officials expecting his White House stock to rise as negotiations advance.
The former USTR negotiator pointed to the path of Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative during Trump’s first term.
“Steven Mnuchin was in charge of China until he wasn’t, and then Wilbur Ross was in charge of China until he wasn’t. And it all came back to Lighthizer, ultimately,” they said in predicting Greer’s ascension.
A White House official said Greer and his team are handling the nuts and bolts of the deals, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been the most prominent figure in trade discussions both publicly and privately since the pause. The Commerce Department is also lending a hand, the official noted, swiping down reports that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been sidelined after doing a less-than-stellar job explaining the administration’s trade position on TV. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is also helping with the agriculture and farming side of negotiations, the official added.
Rumors have also been flying among current administration officials and people who have recently left USTR over how the administration would bulk up the lean USTR office to run negotiations during the tariff pause.
The International Trade Administration at Commerce might get sliced off and sent to USTR to help negotiate the deals, said one source, though another cautioned that the question would be whether they are detailed to USTR, since Congress mandates that USTR leads negotiations.
Trump, though, has often been his own tariff czar, talking out deals or desired terms in public before cameras, making it difficult for his negotiators when he’s not around.
“Their task will be complicated by the fact that many foreign countries now appear to doubt that USTR staff has any real authority to deal,” said a former trade official.
Trump has also repeatedly floated that law firms who come to an agreement with the administration to avoid ramifications from punitive executive orders could also help with the legal work needed for these trade agreements. The sources who spoke with NOTUS, however, said it would be abnormal and ethically questionable at best to have an outside law firm argue on behalf of the United States when the firm could also have clients with competing interests — not to mention the question of top-level security clearances.
The White House official said that senior cabinet members — like Bessent, Lutnick, Greer and Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, and Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade czar — have been working nonstop to bring about Trump’s trade and domestic manufacturing goals.
“President Trump pledged to level the playing field for our industries and workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told NOTUS in a statement. “To keep that promise, President Trump assembled the best and most experienced trade and economic team in modern history — every member of whom came into this administration knowing the gravity of the task ahead of them and ready to work around the clock at lightning speed to deliver.”
The White House official confirmed that India, United Kingdom, the EU and Japan remain the top rung of trade partners the U.S. is looking to make deals with.
“We’re working on the big 15 economies first,” Bessent said last week.
For a sense of what the administration will prioritize in negotiations, a former Trump official highlighted a deal eked out during the president’s first term with Japan that opened up market access to items like beef.
“There will be some market access that comes out of it. That’s one of the key things they’re looking for,” they said.
But questions on what can be done remain open, particularly because Congress still holds authority over trade deals, making a deal that creates lasting change more difficult and time consuming.
“There will definitely be limits to how far they can go on this,” the former Trump official said.
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS. Anna Kramer contributed reporting.