Director of the White House National Economic Council: U.S. trade negotiations "progressing smoothly," with approximately 15 countries submitting proposals.

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said that negotiations with some US trading partners have made significant progress, including agreements that were close to being reached last week. "We have a number of deals that we've been working on that are very, very deep," Hassett said on Thursday. He did not specify which countries were involved in these negotiations before President Trump announced on Wednesday that retaliatory tariffs against most trading partners would be paused for 90 days. Hassett later told reporters that the US Trade Representative's office had informed him that "about 15" countries had proposed specific ideas that "we're studying and considering - and deciding whether they're good enough to propose to the president." Hassett said there will be a high-level meeting at the White House on Thursday to discuss the way forward. "It's a very, very fast process right now - it's not something that just started yesterday or the day before." Hassett said that there had been discussions within the government about whether to pause tariffs or announce that several agreements were close to being finalized - in order to "show the markets that we're serious about executing the strategy that we're following." "The president chose the latter path," he said, referring to the decision to pause tariffs on countries that have not retaliated against the US - explicitly excluding China. Although he did not specifically mention Switzerland as one of the countries making progress in negotiations, Hassett did say that President Trump had a "very warm" phone call with the Swiss President on Wednesday morning.