Next month, America will celebrate its 249th birthday on July 4th. But the rest of the world will be much more concerned with what happens five days later, on July 9th. That is the deadline for Donald Trump's 90-day "pause" in what he calls his "reciprocal tariffs" on the rest of the world. Either countries have a new trade deal in place with the U.S. by that date, or else steep tariffs will once again be imposed upon them.

This pause period came about because Trump backed down almost immediately after his big "Liberation Day" announcement, when the bond markets got (as Trump put it) "yippy" in response. His administration promised "90 deals in 90 days" and has been full of happy talk about how every country in the world is absolutely begging to cut a deal with Trump before the deadline is reached. Here's a typical quote from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: "You're going to see deal after deal, they're going to start coming next week and the week after and the week after. We've got them in the hopper." Except that week after week then goes by and... nothing is announced at all.

To date, the United States has cut precisely zero fully-fledged trade deals with other countries. One country -- the United Kingdom -- has agreed to a framework for a deal, and that's it. And that 90-day calendar now has less than three weeks to run.

Some of the biggest countries were apparently hoping that progress might be made at the G7 conference held this week in Canada, but Trump got bored with it all and left early. No new deals were announced, so Trump staged a re-announcement of the British framework deal (with a few more details sketched in) that turned into a photo-op disaster, as Trump opened his folder up to show all the reporters his big signature and all the rest of the papers fell to the ground. The British prime minister had to bend down and collect them all, which didn't exactly do him much political good back home (the image of him essentially being Trump's lackey, cleaning up Trump's mess, didn't go over big in the British press). He also had to stand mute while Trump mistakenly bragged that he had cut a "trade agreement with the European Union." None of the other countries (including the E.U.) had any deals -- or even gauzy frameworks -- to announce, though, so Britain at least has made progress where others haven't.

Trump has also announced a trade "deal" with China, but again, it wasn't a real deal. It was merely an agreement to go back to the status quo ante in place before both countries hiked their tariff rates through the roof. China is still talking to the White House about a deal, and they've got a longer timeline -- their 90-day pause happened roughly a month after the first pause was announced, so they'll be able to see what happens on July 9th before cutting any sort of final deal of their own.

Trump's timeline was always wildly optimistic. Trade deals normally take years to work out, because they are stuffed full of persnickety details, each of which is the subject of tense negotiations. It is rather remarkable that no other country has moved forward yet, and Trump hasn't had some minor "deal" to announce to the world (such as: "We've just cut a great trade deal with Uruguay!" or wherever). Part of the problem seems to be the framework announced with Britain will leave in place the "baseline" tariff of 10 percent, to be charged on all British goods imported to America. That's not exactly a very good deal, because it amounts to America unilaterally hiking tariff rates on other countries who can't even bargain that baseline rate down to zero.

Now Trump has been reduced to openly threatening the rest of the world again. He has promised that "letters will go out" which will just slap whatever tariff rate Trump feels like on each individual country. Flying back from the G7 meeting, he told reporters: "ultimately you have to understand we're just going to send a letter saying 'this is what you're going to pay, otherwise you don't have to do business with us.'... They're either going to make a good deal or they'll just pay whatever we say they have to pay."

The problem for Trump is that few believe that he'll actually follow through -- and even if he does, that he won't back down again soon after. Wall Street has already adapted to the "TACO" rule ("Trump Always Chickens Out") and the rest of the world can see that whenever Trump's trade policy has negative impacts within the United States, Trump caves. It remains to be seen whether this dynamic will play out again, but if Trump does institute sky-high tariffs on dozens of big trading partners, these effects will happen fairly quickly.

Other countries may also be holding back on cutting deals because of the simple reason that Trump cannot be trusted to abide by any such deal. They have all seen what Trump did to his own trade deal with Mexico and Canada -- a deal which Trump boasted about making during his first term (even though it did no more than tweak the older NAFTA deal around the edges a bit), but which he tossed out the window in his current trade war without a second thought. "Why should we trust Trump when even his closest trading partners can't trust him?" has got to be on the mind of other countries' leaders.

Outwaiting Trump is obviously seen as a valid negotiating tactic, at this point. Trump thought he could just bully all the other countries into submission, but his tough-guy tactics don't seem to be working all that well. Leaders of other countries have their own domestic political audiences, of course, and standing up to the bully in defense of their own country's industries will most likely increase their approval ratings back home. Especially since it looks like any drastic action by Trump will be temporary and short-lived.

Americans are none too happy with Trump already. His average job approval rating is already far underwater, and on the economy Trump is underwater by double-digits. On inflation, it's even worse -- the latest Fox News poll showed only 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of inflation, while a whopping 64 percent disapprove -- which is close to 2-to-1 against. Americans are already paying more for all kinds of things they buy, and with the destabilization in the Middle East, gas prices have begun to rise precipitously as well. Slapping huge tariffs on the rest of the world is only going to make things worse. Which isn't going to do anything for Trump's poll numbers, no matter how much bluster he deploys.

The 90-day clock is ticking. Less than three weeks remain. At this point, it doesn't seem likely that most of the rest of the world will be cutting deals with Trump before then, although he may manage to drag at least a couple framework "deals" across the finish line, just to save face. We'll see what happens by July 9th, and what happens after Trump hikes all the tariffs back up again. Maybe he'll just announce another "pause" period and kick the can down the road again. At this point, that would probably be the best outcome for American consumers.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant