What Trump has Negotiated for You – Top 3 Takeaways July 29th, 2025
Takeaway #1: What President Trump has negotiated for you
Wading through trade deals is hard. Estimating the impact of trade deals harder. Figuring out who wins the U.S. trade deals is easy. With Donald Trump as president of the United States...we win. Bigly. In what figures to be the most important week for trade in either of Trump’s presidencies we started off with a bang, as Sunday brought the EU trade deal to completion. It’s the biggest trade deal to date as it accounts for nearly 18% of total U.S. trade. As I mentioned yesterday – in advance of the president’s deadline, Trump has worked out trade deals with: China, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, United Kingdom, Vietnam and now the EU representing approximately 43% of total U.S. trade. It was immediately clear that the EU trade deal was a largely one-sided win for the U.S. As was noted by the BBC on Monday as they identified President Trump as the biggest winner in the deal... After promising new trade deals with dozens of countries, Trump has just landed the biggest of them all. It looks to most commentators that the EU has given up more, with instant analysis by Capital Economics suggesting a 0.5% knock to GDP. There will also be tens of billions of dollars pouring into US coffers in import taxes. The bottom line is that the EU’s pain is our gain here. But how good have the deals that have been done for the U.S. thus far? When spending some time with all of this yesterday and evaluating estimated tariff revenue collected, new investments into the U.S., export gains with foreign markets being opened to U.S. goods, offset by consumer costs... The estimated net benefit I was able to derive from these deals is $255 billion more for the U.S. economy annually. In other words, by the time we factor in the good and the bad that comes with these trade deals – which include higher tariffs that can lead to higher prices –
Takeaway #2: We're coming out on top in a major way
To put this a different way, for every 1% of trade that takes place, President Trump has been able to able to gain an extra $5.93 billion for the U.S. economy out of it. If he keeps that pace through the eventual completion of this process, he’ll have added an extra $593 billion, or in other words, an extra 2% to the U.S. economy each year. Here’s the final way I’ll frame this for today. What President Trump has already done will add 0.9% to U.S. GDP growth annually. If he completes his trade deals at the same pace, Trump’s negotiation skills will add 2% to economic growth per year. By way of comparison, the CBO’s estimated annual growth rate for the U.S. economy in the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act was 1.8%. Trump’s trade deals weren’t factored into the CBO’s estimate for the BBB at all. In other words, the Trump trade factor alone holds the potential to...
Takeaway #3: Grow the U.S. economy faster than the CBO projected
...over the next decade. That’s independent of the previously anticipated growth. This is a lot of economic mumbo jumbo I know but what it means is that we could be on the brink of an economic boom with an economy that grows fast enough to potentially cover our deficits. That will especially be true if interest rates come down, which is a big IF, as the tariffs are inflationary. In any event, in six months and a week President Trump has already added nearly 1% to the U.S. GDP – personally through better negotiated trade deals. The Art of the Deal is on full display with more on the way.