Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino reports:

Japanese negotiators are complaining that the problem with the trade negotiations with the White House, what’s delaying concrete progress and a real deal, is that US keeps changing its ask in terms of exactly what it wants, said one financial CEO who speaks regularly to country officials. Maybe it’s a negotiating tactic. But the lack of publicly announced deal progress is depressing the dollar, spiking bond yields and leading to a flight to quality to gold and now Bitcoin.

Former US Assistant Secretary of Defense and veteran diplomat Chas Freeman also relayed a similar story on YouTube:

The Japanese have just been in Washington. Their experience apparently was they went to talk to the American leadership on this matter, and the American leadership said ‘what are you offering?’ And the Japanese said ‘well, what is it that you want?’ And the Americans could not explain what they wanted.’

The Art of the Deal, evidently. If I’m one of those countries, I would make a whole bunch of promises that sound good in a headline, like buying fighter planes and whatnot … then just not do those things. You’re probably only going to have to leg it out until the mid-terms.