After days of insisting he would absolutely not change course regarding his imposition of reciprocal tariffs, Donald Trump caved this afternoon — empty handed, without a deal in sight. (David Graham notes, “I’ve written previously that Trump, despite his obsession with strength, almost always folds. He’s actually not much of a negotiator at all, and can be induced to back down pretty easily.”) What’s going on?
A. After Donald Trump’s 2016 election, there was much talk – based on The Art of the Deal (amplified by “The Apprentice”) – about Trump’s purported skill at negotiation.
In October 2017 at Calculated Risk, Bill McBride distinguished between two different types of negotiation: distributive (win-lose) and integrative (win-win). Trump regarded himself as skillful at win-lose negotiations, which are characteristic of selling a used car or real estate. The relationship is over after the sale and so it’s easier to get away with zero-sum bargaining. (Once.) But Trump had no experience with integrative negotiation, which is critical when doing diplomacy, because trust is central to maintaining ongoing relationships. Mexico and Canada and other countries aren’t going anywhere. Trashing them is a fool’s errand.
Watching Trump boast, bluster, and finally blink over the past week confirms that he has learned nothing about negotiation over the past eight years.
B. In October 2019, just after the House began an impeachment inquiry of President Trump, George Conway made the case for Trump’s psychological incapacity to fulfill the duties of the presidency.
“Trump’s erratic behavior has long been the subject of political criticism, late-night-television jokes, and even speculation about whether it’s part of some incomprehensible, multidimensional strategic game. But it’s relevant to whether he’s fit for the office he holds. Simply put, Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.”
Among the duties of a president, as stated in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, is that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” In other words, the president – in order to perform the duties specified in the Constitution – must act as a fiduciary on behalf of the country. Conway (relying on the president’s publicly observable behavior) argued convincingly that Trump’s distinctive psychological characteristics – which Conway finds correlate with two personality disorders, narcissism and sociopathy – render Trump incapable of serving as a fiduciary, who must pursue the public interest, not self-interest; that is, put the country first, rather than himself.
C. There is much evidence that Trump’s perception — what he grasps — is constricted, not as robust as in other people, as illustrated by Jeffrey Goldberg’s account of a visit that President Donald Trump made with his Chief of Staff John Kelly to Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017:.
The two men visited Section 60, the 14-acre section that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars (and the site of Trump’s Arlington controversy earlier this year). Kelly’s son Robert, a Marine officer killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, is buried in Section 60. Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” At first, Kelly believed that Trump was making a reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand nontransactional life choices. I quoted one of Kelly’s friends, a fellow retired four-star general, who said of Trump, “He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself. He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker.”
For most people, even folks who lack courage or patriotism or haven’t the least interest in a military career, it’s hardly mysterious why someone might choose to become a soldier without regard to self-interest, understanding that military service may require sacrifice. It’s shocking that a Commander-in-Chief would fail to comprehend or appreciate this.
D. In today’s New York Times, writing about Trump’s tariff misadventures (before Trump caved), Jamelle Bouie offers perceptive observations about the president:
He did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview.
The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.
This simple fact of the president’s psychology does more to explain his antipathy to international trade and enthusiasm for tariffs and other trade barriers than any theorizing about his intentions or overall vision. It certainly is not as if he has a considered view of the global economy. It is not even clear that Trump knows what a tariff is.