On ABC News’ “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz tried to get Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to clarify matters. That didn’t go well. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” Bessent said about a subject he probably ought to have known more about.

Alas, that was not the administration’s only sign of trouble on one of the president’s top policy priorities. Politico reported:

The United States has already struck 200 trade deals, President Donald Trump said in an interview this week — but he refused to say with whom. ... Pressed on which countries he had made deals with, Trump refused to say, nor did he clarify the terms of the agreements.

....Seeking clarification, Time’s reporters asked, “You’ve made 200 deals?” to which Trump replied, “100%.”

Pressed further, the president eventually said, “Because the deal is a deal that I choose.” As part of the same exchange, he added:

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.

So, Trump is apparently of the opinion that he’s set tariff rates on other countries, which the public should perceive as a “trade deal.”

Or put another way, instead of successfully negotiating deals, the president wants to change the meaning of what a “deal” is.

All of which suggests those who took the “90 deals in 90 days” boast seriously should probably start lowering their expectations.