Can Trump Make Deals?

Great Debates
42

Although Trump is clearly not a conservative in any useful definition of the world, he has certainly drawn heavily from the conservative base, including people who reluctantly voted for him because he was “still better than Hillary,” the religious right who enthusiastically voted for him despite his clear lack of piety and serial philandering, and fiscal conservatives whose desire to remove market regulations “trumps” all other issues. That Trump is not a political or social conservative in any persistent material way kind of begs the question of what it means to be conservative at this point; the term has been so hijacked by people whose primary motivation is to disestablish basic government functions and impose rigid moral strictures rather than demand fiscal accountability and efficiency, and promote social stability, that there is no longer a real voice for those who support the latter. Eisenhower conservatives desiring incremental social change and restrained fiscal policy geared toward protecting free market access and promoting healthy business competition are pretty much left out in the cold by the GOP, and are not really a consistent force in a Democratic party driven by liability law, pharmaceutical, and banking interests desiring to use regulations to protect their own interests.

There is definitely a large middle ground where rational conservatives and the moderately liberal could come to a meeting of minds on many crucial issues that would benefit the nation as a whole, like better trade policy, sustainable energy and agricultural policies, reduction of heritage government bureaucracy while protecting shared national resources and assure good management and use of public lands, good evidence based science and medicine policy, building and improving infrastructure, et cetera. But all of that is BORING and doesn’t generate the kind of entertaining rancor that pitting extremists against one another does, and so we don’t get to hear about most of this.

“Why are we hurting America? Because, ratings. Ratings, Jon, ratings.”

Yeah, if that rag mop on top of his head weren’t so whispy it would definitely cause some temperature overloading.

Stranger

43

Let’s say you knew someone made $150 million a year off their assets. What would you estimate their assets were worth? Oh, yeah, intrinsic value. So with a discount rate of 5%, that’s 3 billion. Discount rate of 7%, and it’s 2.14 billion.

We don’t know if 150 million a year is an average year for Trump or a high or low outlier. It’s almost suspicious that there’s only one specific arbitrary year (2005) for a tax return instead of a decade’s worth. And I guess that even if his yearly cash flow is only 150 million, his brand - his buildings - could be accruing a lot of value that won’t show on the bottom line until the year he sells.

Anyways, I think a fair assessment is that Trump did start out rich, but he did amplify his fortune through making deals. Some paid off, some didn’t. Some of the money he earned was from cheating people. Since some significant fraction of his deals failed, you can say that he’s probably not the world’s greatest dealmaker. Doesn’t mean he’s the worst - nobody has a perfect batting average, not even Warren Buffet.

And of course Trumps grandiose promises are hot air.

44

Christopher Hitchens once noted that Trump’s only talent was covering 90% of his head with 30% of his hair.

45

Ramira#34,

Amen!

Crane

46

(emphasis added)

Yes – people sometimes want to say “oh, he’s not a salesman” yes he is! He’s not selling what you or I want to buy, but he knows what he’s selling and he knows the audience to whom he’s pitching – by gut if not by study – and what they want to hear for him to close the sale. His objective is to say “I, DJT, closed this sale and made money on it; that makes me smart”, and what does he care if the whole project turns out a stinker and the other parties lose their shirts. And that’s the thing, he’s not into “deal-making” in the sense of a mutually satisfactory win-win outcome. He’s into the “fast dealing” to close the sale and then once the money is in his bank say “well, what are you gonna do about it now?”

47

Pretty much. Some of them are just phenomenally stupid, falling for the Hillary-is-the-devil narrative, and rejecting a candidate who, by any objective measure, is eminently qualified to assume the presidency and do a creditable job.

A lot of them are both.

48

I remember the question we used to ask about Richard Nixon - “Would you buy a used car from this man?”

Trump supporters should have kept that in mind. Just because Trump told you what you wanted to here doesn’t mean you got a good deal from him. It’s funny how so many people supported Trump because they thought he was going to stick it to people they didn’t like - without ever wondering if maybe Trump was also sticking it to them.

49

Those are the phenomenally stupid, for the reasons I mention above.

And those are the radical reactionaries (many of whom are phenomenally stupid).

50

This isn’t really at all true, and a list of rich people who’ve blown everything would be a very long list. The fact most of Trump’'s businesses fail (if in fact that’s literally true) is also, rather obviously, completely meaningless and kind of a silly thing to say. MANY people become rich despite most of their ventures failing.

Trump is a highly skilled dealmaker in the world he inhabited prior to 2016. If he wasn’t, he would not live in a gold-plated mansion condo in his own skyscraper. What people don’t seem to get is that Trump’s objective in his deals is to maximize his personal take, NOT the success, necessarily, of the business. His genius throughout his career has been to keep some of the profits while getting someone else to take the losses by leveraging other people’'s money more than his own. That’s a different approach to business than, say, Bill Gates, whose personal fortune was based on the success of Microsoft, or Page and Brin, or whomever. It’s also distinctly different from, say, a speculator, like the guys in “The Big Short” who got rich specifically by correctly betting against the housing market.

Donald Trump is not the only person to ever do this, of course - a guy managed to own the Ottawa Senators hockey team for like ten years and do it totally with other people’s money - but it’s an unusual path to success that requires you be damn good at making deals that benefit you and screw other people without making it obvious you’re doing that.

The problem of course is that this skill simply doesn’t translate to international relations. You cannot hide the cost of the Great Wall of Mexico in a weird multi-directional real estate deal, or get Italy to finance the Social Security system by stiffing a contractor. There’s very little you can do to con a sovereign government

51

As I pointed out during the campaign, the stakes are far higher for Trump now than they’ve ever been. The worst case scenario if he screwed up as a business executive is that he might have lost his fortune. The worst case scenario if he screws up now is that every person on the planet dies.

52

So was Bernie Madoff a successful dealmaker?

53

Now, let’s not be hyperbolic; New Zealand will probably survive. It’s in the Southern Hemisphere and Kiwis are surprisingly hardy, and also, everyone forgets about them. They are to Australia what the Isle of Man is to Great Britain except they’ve thrown off the yoke of their adjacent overlords, who honestly have actually forgotten they exist. It’s like heaven on Earth if Belinda Carlisle were inducted by a Maori tribe.

North America, Europe, Asia, and the better part of Africa are all probably fucked, though. Unless the British SIS can send their best agent to infiltrate his underground bunker, uncover his plan, be captured and have Trump monologue his entire plan to him, turn his lesbian deputy or underaged lover against him, and foil his plans with a well-placed rocket cigarette allowing an army of ninja-trained warriors to enter his volcano lair, killing his identically attired henchmen, and hitting the conveniently marked self-destruct button, then escaping via jet pack, space shuttle, or invisible car.

“If I fail to report, double-oh-eight replaces me.”

Stranger

54

A lot of that religious right is about as pious as Reverend John Oliver, just not as funny.

55

It is indeed literally true and easily confirmed so why the question?
There is the clear pattern in the history of Trump business dealings - the businesses that have required the complex operational company management contre the marketing and the image management - have been successive severe failures that show no learnings and were contre the business cycle, it is to say that other of the similar operations did not fail as his did.

No, it is fairly clear he was a highly skilled marketer in a particular niche.

The actual history does not show the great skill in making the deals in the areas requiring the long-term exposure and the operating management. He is known well in the banking circles for striking the very poor deals in these areas, for the overpaying of the assets.

His record shows a high skill in the type of the quick-change real estate deals and the related kind of the marketing management and the image promotion type deals.

These are not the same

It is a poor and a weak analysis. He made very bad deals, but in the subsequent failures of these deals was skilled in evading paying the full price of it, and it was based on the selling of the marketing value of his brand image (it is why the Deutsche Bank and the consortium did not force him into the personal bankruptcy as they bought the idea it would ruin the small remaining value in the projects). Here he is the great genuis, but it is a poor skill outside of a narrow and a showmanship type business.

It is broader, the problem. The skill he has does not translate it would seem to me to any of the endeavors that require the complex operational management of either multiple strong independent actors or the complex large operational organization management. A person who has manageed the Exxon, it can be imagined this person has that skill. It is absent in this person, Trump, this skill of the complex organizational and the complex multi-party arrangements that are not the quick flipping.

It is a great skill however for the demagoguery focused on the targetted niche market.

If I was of the Republican party I would be very worried and working on the idea of the President Pence who from what I can see shows much more the mastery of what is needed…

56

No, because he couldn’t keep it going. Madoff went to prison when he was the same age Trump is now.

Trump is nowhere near going ti prison. He kept it up his whole life without breaking the law enough to get charged with anything. Madoff didn’t have that level of skill. Trump scams people, but not the stupid, obviously criminal way Madoff did. It’s actually a miracle Madoff lasted as long as he did; there are a lot of Madoffs who get carted off to prison much quicker than he did.

Trump’s in the White House. Madoff’s in the Crowbar Hotel. That’s who’s more successful.

[QUOTE=Ramira]
t is a poor and a weak analysis. He made very bad deals, but in the subsequent failures of these deals was skilled in evading paying the full price of it, and it was based on the selling of the marketing value of his brand image (it is why the Deutsche Bank and the consortium did not force him into the personal bankruptcy as they bought the idea it would ruin the small remaining value in the projects). Here he is the great genuis, but it is a poor skill outside of a narrow and a showmanship type business.
[/QUOTE]

So… my analysis is poor and weak and then you repeat what I said?

You’re almost there, but still not quite getting the point; it’s not a “poor skill” to Donald Trump. You are, as many do, assuming that the many bankruptcies of Trump businesses are a bug, a weakness in his business savvy. They’re not; they’re a feature. The Trump approach is to keep profits and externalize losses. A business that has a great start, when he pockets lots of money, and then fails later at other people’s expense is a success for him. In fact, in many cases he probably plans it out that way, or knows it’s quite likely to happen. But he doesn’t care.

There are lots of people who do this, and there are a variety of ways to do it. Hell, Elon Musk has been losing money his whole life; he’s rich because he gets taxpayers to subsidize his money-losing enterprises.

So will Trump be a failure as a President? Of course, because now the losses are externalized to the rest of the country and the world., and his cons don’t work at this level. But HE will profit. So it’ll be a big success to him, and that’s all he cares about. Am excellent analogy would be a professional sports team. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series last year… and 29 other teams failed. Are the CUBS failures? No, they’re a big success. They don’t care that the other 29 teams failed. In the sense of MLB competition, one team winning at the expense of 29 others is not a bug, it’s a feature. Regrettably, governing a country isn’t supposed to work that way - but Trump doesn’t care.