As far as dealmaking goes, it’s been a tough week for President Trump. On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said that a deal with China wasn’t quite as close as Trump had made it out to be. Less then 24 hours later, talks on denuclearization with North Korea fell apart after Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un failed to agree on even first steps.
Both were major publicity blows to the president in part because of his own grand rhetoric promising quick agreements and great progress. Managing expectations, after all, must be part of an artful deal.
And unrealistic expectations were clearly on display in Hanoi. Talks collapsed after Trump said that he had been unable to convince Kim to support complete denuclearization. Although that shouldn’t have been surprising given stalled talks between negotiations ahead of the summit, it was far from what Trump had clearly expected. In part because of that misplaced optimism, Trump gave his supporters the impression that a deal was imminent setting high expectations not based in reality.
A similar pattern is playing out with China trade talks, albeit without the high-stakes of nuclear warfare or the media fireworks of abruptly broken negotiations.
On Wednesday, while the president’s former lawyer was testifying before the House Oversight Committee, Lighthizer was at the Capitol to warn that Trump’s much talked about trade deal with China might not be quite as close to an agreement as Trump has made it sound.
Speaking before the House Ways and Means Committee, Lighthizer explained, “Let me be clear: Much still needs to be done both before an agreement is reached and, more importantly, after it is reached, if one is reached.”
That cautionary language is a far cry from Trump’s recent rhetoric that the U.S. and China were “very, very close” to reaching a deal.
This isn’t just PR advice for the president. In both cases, a mismatch between reality and expectations erodes public trust. Promising the world tomorrow and delivering only delays frays the fabric of the country a bit.
Needless to say, failed negotiations or significant delays don’t mean that deals cannot happen or won’t eventually be made, but that they are going to take a lot longer than Trump has repeatedly promised. For those eventual deals and ongoing talks to be successful, let alone the political victories that Trump is counting on, he needs to present a realistic picture of what is actually possible and when. And, if he had been doing that all along, this week might not have been quite the blow to his goals that it was.
