US President Donald Trump wanted 90 deals done in 90 days before his signature "Liberation Day" tariff policy was enforced.
But the Trump administration managed to secure just two in that time.
Only one has been published and he has pushed back the introduction of new levies by three weeks.
The new levies were due to come into effect on July 9 at midnight in the US (2pm AEST).
Mr Trump heralded the trade deals with Vietnam and the United Kingdom as significant for the United States but pushed back the implementation of higher tariffs until August 1.
Experts say the lack of progress shows his initial plan "backfired" because he went "too hard, too soon".
Other analysts say the deals done so far show that the US is interested in countering China's influence.
'China is driving some of this'
On Monday, Mr Trump revealed revised figures for the tariffs that 14 countries would face from next month if deals were not made, flagging that more countries would receive revised offers amid talks that several deals were close to being finalised.
"There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting August 1, 2025 — No extensions will be granted," Mr Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Tuesday, US time.
Mr Trump on Tuesday reiterated his threat to slap an additional 10 per cent tariff on members of the BRICS developing countries bloc, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
South-East Asian nations, which were targeted with significant tariffs in the initial announcement on April 2, still face significant rates under the latest plans from the US president.
[TABLE OF NEW RATES]Japan and South Korea's rates have been set at 25 per cent rate, despite being allies of the US and critical to countering China's growing influence in the region.
Other countries, including Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh, face levies of more than 30 per cent.
Steve Okun, founder of APAC Advisors, told ABC's The World that "there's no question China is driving some of this".
"The ire of the United States … is because South-East Asia is seen as a trans-shipment point, legally and illegally," Mr Okun said.
"Chinese goods are coming to South-East Asia and being exported to the United States and that is being seen as a workaround [to avoid tariffs]."
Trans-shipment, also known as origin washing, can see components made in China assembled in other countries in the region, to change their point of origin before being transported to the US.
The process can increase the value of the product to the point where it can legally change its point of origin, but some businesses illegally relabel products to avoid detection.
The Financial Times reported that in April, when Donald Trump unveiled his tariff policy and began his trade war with China, nearly one-fifth of Chinese exports went to members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore.
The newspaper reported that its exports to the US dropped to 10.5 per cent in the same month.
All world leaders sent a letter by Donald Trump this week were warned that goods trans-shipped to the US would face a higher tariff from August 1.
A clause about trans-shipment was also specifically included in the agreement with Vietnam.
The US–Vietnam trade deal
Donald Trump announced on his social media platform that the US had struck a deal with Vietnam last week, but it has not been made public.
Mr Trump said it would allow American goods to enter Vietnam duty-free, while imports from the South-East Asian nation would face a 20 per cent levy.
That is down from the 46 per cent tariff initially announced in April.
Donald Trump and Vietnamese state media said that US-made large-engine cars would have more access to the Vietnamese market, too.
Another part of the deal will see goods from third countries that are shipped via Vietnam to the US face a 40 per cent levy.
China expert at think-tank Chatham House, William Matthews, said the clause likely targeted Beijing.
"The trans-shipment clause does seem to be directed at China but it is not clear what specifically constitutes trans-shipment," Dr Matthews told the ABC.
He said if it was designed to reduce China's role in Vietnam's supply chains, Vietnamese producers would struggle to be compliant because provenance was difficult to trace.
The economic impact of sourcing goods from countries other than China may also prove too challenging, he added.
"Vietnamese producers rely on Chinese components and the reality is that component manufacture, as well as a lot of raw materials processing, is dominated by China," he said.
Nguyen Khac Giang, a Vietnam expert at Singapore think tank the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said Hanoi was hoping for something closer to the 10 per cent baseline but "a deal is better than no deal".
"Vietnam depends heavily on the US market and needed certainty. Washington, for its part, gets what it wanted: a headline-grabbing zero tariff and a pledge to crack down on trans-shipment," Dr Giang said.
"But as always, the real test lies in enforcement."
Dr Matthews added: "The bottom line is that China makes stuff at a scale and cost that the US cannot compete with without massive changes to its own industrial policy.
"There's a risk that Washington's strategy simply leads other countries to conclude that the economic relationship with the US is less valuable than that with China, typically a much larger trading partner and major investor in South-East Asia, which would make the US's overall position worse."
The US–UK trade deal
Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer jointly announced the deal between the allies in May.
The trade deal was the first struck after the tariffs were announced and saw the US slash tariffs on British cars and steel.
The levies on steel and aluminium exports from Britain to the US have been cut from 25 per cent to zero.
Britain also agreed to drop its tariffs to 1.8 per cent from 5.1 per cent for US imports.
In addition, tariffs on an annual quota of 100,000 British cars sold to the US will be cut from 27.5 per cent to 10 per cent.
But those reductions are contingent on the UK meeting "US requirements" on supply chain and ownership issues — a clause experts said was aimed again at curtailing China.
David Henig, from the European Centre of International Political Economy, told the ABC that from the UK's perspective, the deal was important "because it exists".
"We're not going into the next couple of weeks wondering whether we need to get a deal, wondering if we'll get a deal and what it'll look like — OK, we're wondering whether it will hold, but at least we have some element of predictability," Mr Henig said.
"The deal really isn't significant in terms of content but it is significant in terms of its existence because you've got a US that's actually been struggling to reach deals … but it wasn't economically transformational".
He said it was difficult to pick a strategy from the White House officials negotiating the deals, but he believed the two agreements so far showed clearer aims from the US president.
"He wants tariffs, he wants to protect certain products like cars and steel that he thinks should be made in the US, and ultimately the deals he's doing do exactly that, and they reduce or remove some of the other barriers in the other markets," he said.
Which major deals have not been signed?
The three-week reprieve on the original deadline has given countries and trading blocs yet to strike a deal with the Trump administration seemingly more time to do so.
Mr Trump said on Tuesday, US time, that he was probably two days away from sending a letter to the European Union outlining the tariff rate on their exports.
The EU had previously said it was focused on "rebalancing" and concessions for key export industries including aircraft, some medical equipment and spirits.
A deal was "done" with China, according to Mr Trump, but Beijing has characterised it only as the "framework" of an agreement to end an escalating series of tit-for-tat tariff increases.
A US trade deal with India has long been touted by Mr Trump and key officials, but talks have reportedly stalled on disagreements over proposed US tariffs on auto components, steel and some agricultural goods.
New Delhi also proposed retaliatory duties against the US at the World Trade Organization on some automobile and car parts, saying Washington's current proposal would affect $US2.89 billion ($4.4 billion) of India's exports.
Mr Trump has threatened Indonesia with a 32 per cent tariff on top of a base 10 per cent if it does not strike a new trade agreement by August 1.
Indonesia's chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto, who travelled to Washington for trade talks, told the AFP news agency on Wednesday (Jakarta time) that the state oil company and agricultural firms had signed deals to boost their purchases of American goods.
South-East Asia's biggest economy has pledged to step up agriculture, energy and merchandise imports to close the trade gap with Washington.
Indonesian negotiators earlier this week struck a US$1.25 billion ($1.92 billion) deal to buy more US wheat.
Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Pichai Chunhavajira said the country would continue to negotiate while facing the prospect of a 36 per cent tariff from next month.
Ben Bland, director of the Asia Pacific program at Chatham House, said the lack of deals indicated Mr Trump's tariff policy had "backfired a little bit".
"He hoped that people would cave very, very quickly and that didn't happen, and meanwhile the markets started to get nervous," Mr Bland told the ABC.
"I think that fed back into the president's thinking, so I think it's he who went too hard, too soon."
He said the challenge now was not necessarily negotiating the individual agreement with each country, "but the fear that these agreements don't even hold".
Japan's chief tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Tuesday that Mr Trump's letter and recent levy announcement provided no relief, but the Japanese government was committed to negotiating regardless.
"That's the flip side about Donald Trump using uncertainty to gain extra leverage — it's very hard for the other side to put their faith in an agreement if they think you're always going to be changing the terms," Mr Bland said.
"These clouds of uncertainty hanging over Asia's big trading economies are going to be there for some time, which in the end is likely to undermine the whole point of the tariffs, which is partly to raise revenue but also, in theory, to encourage countries to invest more and build more stuff in the US.
"Unless you are going to have certainty that the tariff rates and the tax environment is going to be stable, people aren't going to be making multi-year investments into building physical factories and training up people in the US."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said the US had received about $US100 billion ($153 billion) in tariff income so far this year, which could increase to $300 billion by the end of 2025.
ABC/wires
