Washington, Wall Street and global leaders have spent two days fretting whether President Donald Trump is open to compromise on his new tariffs or whether they are as final as the White House has been making them out to be.

Trump ended some of the mystery on Friday: He’s ready to talk, though maybe not quite ready to cut deals.

In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, Trump announced that he had just spoken with Vietnam’s leader To Lam about the country’s offer to eliminate all tariffs as part of an agreement with the U.S., adding that he looks “forward to a meeting in the near future.” And a White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about behind the scenes discussions, confirmed that multiple countries have reached out.

The acknowledgements that the president is even entertaining offers from other countries confirms the growing consensus both at home and abroad that the tariffs Trump announced in Oprah-like fashion during a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday are open to negotiation. White House officials have, however, been cautious in their wording, noting that hearing offers from other countries is not the same as actively negotiating with them.

The parsing of words — even behind the scenes — illustrates the messaging needle the White House has been trying to thread as even close allies sound unsure of Trump’s intentions and are wary of appearing to contradict signals that remain muddy.

Still, Trump’s latest signals are an apparent shift from the rhetoric of top administration officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and top trade adviser Peter Navaro, who spent much of Thursday insisting the tariffs were not a negotiating tactic but the start of a permanent effort to bring back domestic manufacturing and move away from a global trade order that has persisted for decades.

One person close to the White House, who was granted anonymity to share the details of private conversations with the president and others inside the administration, said they view those comments more as wishful thinking from the administration’s staunchly protectionist camp — noting that’s not what’s driving the president on tariffs.

“If you talk to Donald Trump, it’s about the fairness of us not getting screwed, but also using tariffs both as foreign policy and economic policy,” the person said. “If you look at Peter Navarro, it’s, he wants to develop everything in-house. He doesn’t want to rely on China for anything. Probably pretty smart. But we’re 15 years away from having a chip industry that can supply any of our needs.”

The person rejected, however, the growing consensus from Republicans on the Hill that the ultimate goal of these tariffs is 100 percent free trade.

“It’s a hybrid. I don’t think it’s a full free trade thing in any way. I think if this administration could snap their fingers, I’m not saying it would be isolationist, but it would want to be self-supportive,” the person added.

The person close to the White House added that while they have not heard a firm decision on exemptions from top officials, they expect the administration to pursue sectoral-based exemptions, country-based exemptions, or both.

The White House official tried to square the protectionist messages on Wednesday and Thursday with the president’s openness to hearing offers from other countries, saying “two things can be true at the same time.”

“There’s a national emergency,” — necessitating a change in trade policy — “and countries have already reached out to talk,” the person added.

There’s also a legal reason for insisting negotiations are off the table. The White House has relied on declaring a “national emergency” — arguing that unfair trade practices are a threat to national security — as a legal basis for levying tariffs without congressional approval. Voicing that they are up for negotiation might suggest the trade deficit does not truly constitute an emergency, thus putting the tariffs on shakier legal ground.

A second White House official said that the president is “always willing to accept phone calls from other world leaders to hear them out and to hear these proposals” but argued “that’s not a negotiation per say.” The official confirmed that the White House’s version of “negotiations” could be on the table in the near future, but said they aren’t prepared for that yet.

Trump’s apparently genuine interest in hearing from foreign leaders comes as good news for Wall Street, which appeared to be holding out some hope that the president would be open to some sort of dealmaking with foreign leaders. While Thursday’s market drops were dramatic, analysts noted that they were not as steep as they might have been had Wall Street truly believed there was no room for negotiation at all on the tariffs announced Wednesday.

While the White House spent the week leading up to April 2 promising lawmakers and business leaders that they would receive some sense of certainty when Trump announced his reciprocal tariffs, the result has been anything but. And openness to hearing offers from other countries does not yet mean the president is yet prepared to take action to pare them back.

“The fact that there was a debate about what to do with the tariffs up until basically the last minute and now that there is debate about whether there is going to be deals or not, has really brought home to the business community that there does not appear to be any clear plan with the tariffs,” said Peter Harrell, who led the international economics team on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council.

Not only did Trump set tariffs higher than many in the business community expected, he followed through with both a global tariff and higher reciprocal tariffs, potentially spoiling the bets companies made seven years ago when they began shifting production from China to countries like Mexico and Vietnam that face lower tariffs and have better diplomatic relationships with the U.S.

Now, the market is sliding as businesses consider the incoming retaliation from major trading partners and Trump’s receptiveness to deals. Their decisions on whether to engage with the administration appear to be tariff by tariff. The auto industry, for example, is focused on loosening Trump’s earlier round of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, putting aside any conversations about the global tariffs for now. And they fully anticipate that Trump’s 25 percent tariff on automobiles, which went into effect Wednesday, will stay put for the entirety of Trump’s term.

But some countries appear to be holding out hope for deals. Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Thursday night that his country hopes to reach a pact with the Trump administration in coming days to address concerns around the auto tariffs, as well as other tariffs on steel and aluminium that were imposed last month.

“We need to reduce as most as we can, as far as we can, uncertainties and reduce tariffs on cars and steel and aluminum. This is the work to do the next four days,” Ebrard said during a virtual discussion hosted by the Council of Americas, a business group focused on the Western Hemisphere.

Ebrard also told the group that he was “more optimistic” about the future for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade deal Trump negotiated in his first term, than he was two weeks ago.

The three countries are scheduled to review the USMCA next year, though that’s now expected to turn into a larger trade negotiation that starts in the coming weeks. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in an interview Thursday on Fox Business Network, said the administration has a number of ideas for those talks.

“We’re already thinking of all the ways we need to tighten up that deal in a big way, to make sure that third countries aren’t benefiting from it, make sure we’re incentivizing American production, and to make sure that Canada and Mexico live up to their commitments with respect to market access,” Greer said.

Doug Palmer contributed to this report.