For months, the Trump administration has said deals are imminent, working with 18 key partners to lower trade barriers while hundreds of other countries wait in line to get out from under the burden of higher tariffs.     AFP

With just a week and a half remaining of a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, the White House is running out of time to negotiate its long-promised trade deals that could bring some certainty to an increasingly uneasy economy, reports CNN. 

But with just two trade frameworks inked and dozens to go before the July 9 deadline, that timeframe appears increasingly unlikely - just as America's economy might be taking a turn for the worse. 

For months, the Trump administration has said deals are imminent, working with 18 key partners to lower trade barriers while hundreds of other countries wait in line to get out from under the burden of higher tariffs. But the timeframe continues to shift. 

"I've made all the deals," Trump said in a Time interview in late April, saying trade negotiations with foreign partners were nearly complete. "I've made 200 deals." 

More than two weeks later, Trump acknowledged that hundreds or even dozens of deals aren't possible on such a short timeframe - a point he reiterated Friday at a press briefing at the White House.  "You know, we have 200 countries," Trump said. "We can't do that. So at a certain point, over the next week and a half or so, or maybe before, we're going to send out a letter. We talked to many of the countries, and we're just going to tell them what they have to pay to do business in the United States. And it's going to go very quickly." 

That notion of establishing new tariffs for countries that can't or won't reach a deal with the United States has been floating around for over two months, but the timeline keeps getting pushed back. On April 23, Trump said his administration would "set the tariff" for countries that fail to negotiate new terms in the following few weeks. On May 16, Trump said that "at a certain point, over the next two to three weeks … we'll be telling people what they'll be paying to do business in the United States." 

Meanwhile, the United States remains in active negotiations with its key trading partners. But those deals have been promised for months, too, with little to show for it. On June 11, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a flood of deals was coming.