Can Trump Make Deals?

Great Debates
1

Basic to deal making is understanding the players and pieces in the game. Trump exhibits total cluelessness about international trade. We do not have a trade agreement with Germany. But, Trump believes there is one that, among others, is the worst deal ever.

I am confident Trump understands the players and pieces in self promotion and in financing New York real estate. However, so far, he has been unable to deal with the Congress on ACA legislation, his staff on policy, the intelligence community on Obama wiretaps, and other leaders on trade.

Deal making requires the ability to bring your opponent to your position. Trump’s recent track record is not good in that regard. Is Trump as clueless as he appears to be?

Crane

2

Yes.

…The man’s not fit to shovel shit from one place to another.

3

Given that his business dealings haven’t been all that fabulous, I would say yes, he is that clueless. He has “succeeded” as much as he has, because he came up already insanely rich, in a world that was specifically adjusted to help rich people get richer, and avoid paying for their mistakes. More of his wildly over-hyped self-named businesses have failed utterly, than have succeeded. The ones that still stand, are all owned primarily by other people. But Trump is personally okay, because the US legal system was designed BY RICH PEOPLE to make sure that their personal fortunes are never at risk at all.

Trump is on the “real world” now, hence his struggles. He has yet to show any indication that people will only put up with rudeness, bombast, insult, and lies, when they desperately want your money. When you want theirs, as he does now, they tend to react far less cheerfully.

4

I’m starting to believe what success Trump has had in the past regarding deal making is mostly due to him (well, actually his father) already being rich. The other party to the deal was just dazzled by the wealth opposite him or her.

5

Igor,

Excellent point. Trump is the beggar rather than the beggee.

Crane

6

I’d say it’s his ability to promise the moon with absolute sincerity. Until he turns around and refuses to fulfill those promises, and uses his power to do whatever he can to squash any kind of dissent or redress.

Problem is, that doesn’t work with world leaders. They’ve probably been there, done that themselves, and aren’t about to accede to his demands just because he’s The Donald.

7

In order to make “a deal”, other people have to believe that when you say “If you do X I will do Y”, you will in fact do those things.

Nobody believes that about Donald Trump.

8

He did, though, show initiative upon realizing the importance of that sports almanac.

9

It may be worth noting that Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” was ghostwritten.

The ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, is now bitterly sorry that he ever wrote it.

This article in the New Yorker is well worth reading:

Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All

The whole article is pretty good, though depressing.

10

I think being a ace dealmaker is a big part of his self image, and that the Chinese have figured this out. We should watch for China to offer a big “deal” for which Trump can take credit. Jack Ma’s meeting with him already hints at this. China would calculate that if he is able to take credit for a deal which involves Chinese investment with attendant job creation in the US, he is less likely to engage in his usual bellicose behavior toward China. We will soon see if this is the case.

11

race#10,

Sounds reasonable for both Trump and China.

Crane

12

At the time Trump was just starting out (and got that “small loan” of $1M from his father), his father was maybe worth $30-40M tops, AFAIU.

Today, there are about 70,000 people worth $30M+ in the US. There are 540 billionaires in the US.

There are a lot of people worth $30M+. People worth multiple billions are very rare. So you’d have to explain how it is that very few of the $30-40M people can make multiple billions if you think it is so easy to do.

13

We’ve seen no proof that Trump has ever been a billionaire.

14

We have as much proof as we have for the other billionaires - for example, being included in the Forbes 500 richest.

15

I think Trump is actually a good salesman and deal maker. He was fairly successful in his business experience (although probably not as successful as he claims).

But I think he’s in over his head now. The people who he’s dealing with now have risen through politics to the same level he’s at. They’re just as good at negotiating as he is and they have experience in politics that Trump doesn’t have. So now he’s the fish at the table.

A wiser person would realize their inexperience and be cautious in dealing with other politicians while he learns the ropes. But Trump seems to be unaware of his disadvantage.

16

The only real talent Trump has is self promotion. He has parlayed that into a huge business and winning the presidency. He does not seem to be skilled at anything else.

However he has connected with the conservative base in ways I haven’t seen anyone do before. However did he do that intentionally? I don’t know, I don’t know if he tried to connect with them or if it just happened because he is on the same wavelength as them.

17

I read somewhere that Trump hired researchers to listen to AM talk radio for months, and listen to what issues were important to angry rural voters. This would make sense to me, because until his presidential bid, Trump didn’t spout a lot of the things he does now. He was always a thin-skinned, misogynistic and jingoistic bully, but a lot of the racist stuff is recent. So I think he scoped his audience and made his pitch to them.

19

Perhaps he should have stuck with what he knows.

20

Perhaps America should have, too.

21

Trump can make a deal. That doesn’t mean it’s a good deal. A good deal for him personally may not be a good deal for the US.

There’s the famous story of when Bill Gates dealt with the IBM lawyers as young nerd, and used the image of suits= knowledge + power, nerd with T-shirt = clueless + easy to manipulate deliberatly to get himself a good deal because the lawyers didn’t understand the implications of software.

So … maybe Trump is just pretending to be abysmally stupid in order to trick everybody, and will make awesome deals.

or… by pretending to be dumb, he has turned dumb (because that happens mostly in the real world.

There’s another aspect: Besides things like reneging on promises, that is, cheating his employees on their wages, there are stories like his Flag-pole building trial, where he deliberatly broke the law with a small city, knowing that a small city couldn’t afford thousands of lawyer hours, and reached an agreement for the much larger violation. So he’s gotten used to either making deals with other rich guys where favours are traded (and not realizing if he got ripped off), or squashing people he’s ripped off with his hordes of lawyers.

That doesn’t work on the international stage.

I wonder where the illusion about Germany comes from. UK, yes, they are Brexiting. France, might be with Le Pen having about 40 %. Austria made some noises right after Brexit, and was then ignored again by everybody. Wilders for NL was just struck down.

But despite grumbling, nobody in Germany really wants to leave the EU. Pegida makes headlines, but is not a party, and the AfD is fracturing, and talking more about the Euro, than a total Exit. The biggest embarrassment in that regard is (once again of course) Seehofer, cozying up to Orban and Putin and talking about Bavaria making seperate trades with Russia despite sanctions. But only people who aren’t savy would take Seehofer seriously.

The press commented that while Merkel wanted to get closer to Trump for the sake of German industry, she had to walk a fine line because of the “distaste” for Trump in German - any kowtowing would damage her, and we have an election this September. (Not that it will change much - all current predictions point to both major parties at 30%, the rest too small, so Great coalition likely continues.)