DONALD TRUMP: THE CONSUMMATE NO-DEAL-MAKER REVISITED

Trump's House of No Deals

In July of 2018, I posted Donald Trump: The Consummate No-Deal Maker (The Consummate No-Deal Maker).  In the piece, I contrasted Trump’s reputed (mostly self-reputed) deal-making prowess with his actual accomplishments as president. During his run for president, Trump bragged that deals would be easy, clean and quick, and they would exceed all expectations. He would make, as he put it, “beautiful deals that no other president could make.”

Well, after a little more than a year in office he made no deals of any note: no deal on health care, climate change, immigration reform and DACA, gun control, spending cuts, NAFTA, China or Pacific trade. He failed to broker deals on Iran, Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, and made no progress on his Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative. Despite much fanfare, and his bromance with North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un , Pyongyang remained steadfast in holding on to its nuclear weapons.

Now that he’s been in office nearly three years, has his alleged nonpareil deal making skills finally showed up? Let’s see.

Worked Like a Puppet

The definitive answer is a loud “no.” Not only has Trump’s deal making brilliance remained missing-in-action, many of his most significant endeavors have backfired, benefiting our adversaries at the expense of U.S. national interests. The tactics he employed as a real estate deal maker, where he bullied, threatened, deceived, and made false promises, have clearly not worked in the more complex world of international diplomacy. The man who in business was prepared to outlasted his opponents, as president has shown himself to be impulsive and impatient, often willing to sacrifice leverage without getting anything in return. The evidence is clear: the ill-prepared, clueless president has repeatedly been “worked” by more knowledgeable and savvy adversaries.

In talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Trump granted Kim’s demand that the US cancel traditional large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea and in return received, well, virtually no significant concession. There has been no retrenchment of North Korea’s nuclear program; in fact, credible reports indicate it has expanded. A concrete agreement whereby North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons remains elusive, as many experts had predicted.

Bromance

Trump has made no progress on his promise to make the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians, which is not surprising given that he has fundamentally shifted US policy toward Israel at the expense of Palestinian interests. Israel celebrated Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem; the Palestinians understandably decried it since they also claim the city as its capital. Jerusalem had always been set aside for final status negotiations, now this piece of leverage has been eliminated.

Worse yet, by moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and turning it into an outpost for advancing the interests of Israeli settlers, Trump has essentially green-lighted Israeli annexation of the West Bank, further undermining prospects for a peace settlement.

Jerusalem may have been Trump’s the most dramatic shift, but there are other signposts that signal Washington’s bias toward Israel. These include abandoning the Iran nuclear deal and backing Israeli military operations in Syria.

Trump’s actions may have shored up his pro-Israel base, and nurtured his love affair with Netanyahu, but they have undermined Washington’s capacity to serve as an honest broker for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. The peace process is now moribund, and a resolution has never seemed further from reach.

In Afghanistan, Trump’s special envoy negotiating a peace agreement with the Taliban militia sought a guarantee that the country would not be used as a base for terrorist attacks against the United States, in return for the US reducing its troop presence to 8,600. President Trump showed no patience in trying to work out a deal and the talks ultimately fell apart. Trump then moved to unilaterally reduce American forces anyway, eventually to around the proposed 8,600 number, thus eliminating an important piece of leverage in future talks. With the American hand played, it’s hard to envision a successful peace agreement that considers the interests of the Afghani government.

Selling Out the Kurds

Then there’s Trump’s impulsive decision to remove American troops from Kurdish-controlled territory in north-east Syria. In a personal conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump effectively green-lighted a Turkey invasion and subsequent routing of the Kurds, who had been an important ally in our fight against ISIS. A Syrian deal that would have protected the Kurdish presence in Syria, and kept Russian and Iranian influence at bay, is now mute.

Trump’s love affairs with foreign strongmen has been widely reported. I can’t explain this strange attraction, perhaps he envies their autonomy of action and dictatorial control over opposition groups. Whatever the motivation, the net result appears to be he is more dedicated to pleasing his new friends (“good guys”) than in working out deals that advance the national interests of the United Sates.

With Friends Like These

Beyond North Korea, Afghanistan, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump has yet to sit down with Iran to negotiate a new, and “better,” nuclear deal, despite saying he is willing to talk. Despite boasting that trade wars are easy to win, the current trade war with China continues to devastate American farmers and consumers. Trump’s abandonment of the Intermediate Range Nuclear (INF) nuclear agreement with Russia has set the stage for a renewed nuclear arms race, one that might have been averted had he instead sought to address America’s concerns about alleged Russian violation of the pact at a negotiating table.

On the domestic scene, Trump’s promised deals on immigration, health care, gun control, spending cuts and infrastructure remain on hold, with little prospect for success.

Giving the dog his due, trade deals have been worked out on NAFTA and with South Korea and Japan, but the results have been mixed or incomplete, and hardly to the benefit of the United States (big corporations would disagree), despite Trump’s boastful celebration of his great success that only he could have accomplished.

Negotiations with Canada and Mexico to revise the NAFTA trade agreement is his signature achievement, particularly since he has disparaged nearly every major trade deal the US has entered. While the revised agreement does provide American dairy farmers greater access to Canada’s market provides that a higher percentage of cars would have to be manufactured in North America, and does update provisions on the digital economy, agriculture and labor unions, it has not been well-received by many pro-trade advocates, or trade skeptics, who argue it did not go far enough. The free traders are saying that there are still too many limits on the free flow of goods and services across borders; trade skeptics maintain it does not adequately safeguard American jobs, encourage higher wages, and protect the environment. This means that the agreement could face an uphill fight in the Congress, particularly since President Trump has shown little acumen, or interest, in forging bipartisan consensus.

President Trump did sign a revised trade agreement with South Korea, cementing the first bilateral trade deal with his administration. The US-Korea Trade Agreement promises to open the Korean market to increased American exports while allowing for tariff protection on Korean trucks. Analysts have said, however, that it offers only modest changes from the existing agreement negotiated under President Obama, which Trump blamed for the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. They say the revised agreement would not appreciably change the balance between the two countries.

Trump also reached a limited trade pact with Japan that offers some benefits to American exporters, but the deal is far more limited than the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump refused to sign, and other trade pacts that cover a wide range of industries and rules governing trade. Nevertheless, Trump can chalk the agreement up in his sparse win column—or as he likes to put it, his “win-win” column.

It should be noted that President Trump has been good at one thing: abandoning existing agreements, like the Paris climate accord, TPP, Iran nuclear deal, and the INF treaty. He is at his best when he doesn’t have to negotiate with anyone.

If all Donald Trump can do is hang his hat on the South Korea and Japan trade deals, noting his failures to reach agreement on nuclear weapon deals with North Korea, Iran and Russia, settlements with the Taliban and Syria, Israeli-Palestinian peace, or on a trade deal with China, one would be hard-pressed to give him a deal-making grade of anything higher than a solid F, and that might be charitable given the harmful consequences of his no deals and withdrawals from existing agreements, not to mention his various actions that have undermined the credibility of the United States as a reliable ally.  

Trump’s bullying style has proven grossly inappropriate for the world of diplomacy. His reluctance to seek expert advice, take account of the historical context of past negotiations, come to talks well- prepared with a coherent negotiating strategy and equipped with an understanding of conflicting political realities at home and abroad has doomed him to failure as a deal maker. You can’t achieve win-win outcomes when your main motivation is the personal self-glorification that comes with of one-sided victories.

Wendy R. Sherman, Obama’s former undersecretary of state who helped broker the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, referred to Trump as a “win-lose negotiator.” “That’s what he did as a real estate developer. He doesn’t see the larger landscape, the interconnections, the larger costs, the loss of greater benefits.” This just about says it all.

Don't You Wish?