Is Donald Trump a masterful negotiator or an unqualified bumbler? The truth likely lies somewhere in between, but we want to avoid closed-mindedness here and accept the possibility that a mercurial president can secure a beneficial agreement by means of wrong-footing the other side’s negotiators. In any case, we’re going to find out. Deadlines on important diplomatic and trade agreements are approaching, and we should soon know if Trump’s famed skills in negotiating sweet deals in New York real estate can be translated to the White House.
Trump outlined his strategy, recall, in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal: “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward,” he wrote. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.” He also expressed a disdain for deep analysis in favor of off-the-cuff self-reliance: “I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.”
Now the standard way to negotiate with foreign governments is to dispatch low- and mid-level diplomats to meet with their foreign counterparts and quietly reach a deal behind closed doors. The Trump approach is alternately to cajole, butter up, and harshly criticize the other side in hopes of gaining leverage in those negotiations.
On North Korea, he has belittled dictator Kim Jong-un as “Little Rocket Man” but also praised him as “very honorable.” He threatened Kim with “fire and fury” but also claimed, “I try so hard to be his friend.” On China, Trump blasted the country’s trade surplus with the United States as unfair and released a list of 1,300 imports targeted for higher tariffs. But he has also said he and Chinese president Xi Jinping “will always be friends” and last week promised to help Chinese company ZTE, which Trump’s own Commerce Department had sanctioned for trading with Iran and North Korea. As for our North American allies, this week, Trump said Mexico—the second-biggest buyer of U.S. products behind Canada—“has done nothing for us.”
A sympathetic interpretation would understand these rhetorical tergiversations not as pointless contradictions but as posturing. Taken by itself, for instance, Trump’s most recent boast of his partnership with Xi—“[we are] working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast”—is extremely troublesome. But there’s no reason to view the fate of ZTE in a vacuum; it may be part of a larger negotiation with China, which could result in better access to the country for U.S. companies.
It’s still too early to judge the overall success or failure of Trump’s unpredictable approach. We’re deeply skeptical—wild bluster is one thing in a campaign, but crafting international agreements demands careful study and forethought. The president and his administration have at least shown that they’re not afraid to walk away from bad deals: the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal. Trump is much harder to read than, say, Barack Obama, who in 2014 was clearly desperate for a deal—any deal at all—with Tehran.
The verbal beat-downs and buildups can’t go on forever. A new deal on NAFTA would need to be submitted to Congress this month to ensure passage in this Congress. Tariffs on China will take effect in June. Trump and Kim have a tentative June 12 summit date in Singapore. As the deadlines approach, we can expect posturing and brinkmanship from both sides—like this week’s announcement from North Korea that it might withdraw from the summit in light of U.S.-South Korean military exercises.
Whatever happens, Americans will know if they’ve been fooled. As Trump himself put it in his book: “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
