# The Trump budget - a good or bad first negotiation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 23, 2017, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246 "2017-05-23T00:05:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/1 "2017-05-23T00:05:08Z")
For this thread, I’d like to talk about negotiation tactics and the being-released Trump budget (saving what any of us might think about any specific line items for a separate thread, or many threads). Much has been said about Trump’s “negotiation skills”. Defenders of this budget might say “this is a clear negotiation tactic. He won’t get everything he wants, so he starts low.” But to me, this comes across as the tourist who “negotiates” by walking into a carpet shop and offering $10 for a $1000 carpet. This reveals the tourist to be a complete rube, and the shopkeeper either laughs him out of the shop (which is what happened with the Continuing Resolution last month), or invites him in and ends up taking complete advantage of him. By which I mean, would Trump do better getting more of what he wants by starting with a less radical budget? Or has he successfully shifted the window to get more of what he wants. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/2 "2017-05-23T01:45:44Z")
Starting off with a pretty radical change as an FY18 budget comes with some background. He made a pretty radical proposal for FY17. Congress basically ignored it, hammered out a deal, and sent him back a passed bill to sign. Trump tried to spin it like it was a big success for the administration. In doing so he reinforced the notion that he won’t even push back when Congress ignores him on appropriations. I expect his negotiating strategy to work just as well this time. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/3 "2017-05-23T03:09:26Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > For this thread, I’d like to talk about negotiation tactics and the being-released Trump budget (saving what any of us might think about any specific line items for a separate thread, or many threads). > > Much has been said about Trump’s “negotiation skills”. Defenders of this budget might say “this is a clear negotiation tactic. He won’t get everything he wants, so he starts low.” > > But to me, this comes across as the tourist who “negotiates” by walking into a carpet shop and offering $10 for a $1000 carpet. This reveals the tourist to be a complete rube, and the shopkeeper either laughs him out of the shop (which is what happened with the Continuing Resolution last month), or invites him in and ends up taking complete advantage of him. > > By which I mean, would Trump do better getting more of what he wants by starting with a less radical budget? Or has he successfully shifted the window to get more of what he wants. I’ve posted about this before, but Trump is the worst negotiator ever. He uses stupid tactics like the time he and Paul Ryan pretended to walk away from the healthcare bill, only to find that the salesman didn’t follow them into the parking lot… Even when people want to agree with him and to make a deal, they are frequently in a position where they can’t, simply because they’ll look like theyre knuckling under to a bully. But more broadly- negotiation is about information. The party that has the most information has the advantage. To negotiate something like the healthcare bill, you should to know it backwards and forwards. That way you could find the inefficiencies and find the tweaks and grasp how the parts affect the whole… Or if you’re negotiating to build a wall, it might help to have an awareness that there is a river in the way for like 800 miles. I suspect he started to lose it it the mid-2000’s, around the time of the Steaks and Water and Universities and the disastrous Trump Soho ( probably no suprise that it’s not in Soho, it’s right by the Holland Tunnel entrance ramps which is cool if you like big trucks. And it’s built on a burial ground. And he thought he could sell “condos” in a building that’s not residentially zoned. And he had sleazy partners that he didn’t properly vet and he later tried to distance himself. > **[The Dominick](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_SoHo)** > > The Dominick, formerly the Trump SoHo, is a $450 million, 46-story, 391-unit hotel condominium located at 246 Spring Street at the corner of Varick Street in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was announced in 2006, completed in 2008 and renamed in 2017. > The area is zoned for manufacturing, which precludes permanent residences from being built there. The condo-hotel design was approved after negotiations with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As a hotel condomi... But I honestly think he’s held a largely ceremonial role in the Trump Organization for some time now, coming in for big signing ceremonies after the deals have been worked out by others. And his kids probably sweat even that out. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/4 "2017-05-23T04:07:26Z")
Over at Vox, Dylan Matthews is calling it a joke. > **[Trump’s budget is a joke](https://www.vox.com/2017/5/20/15666024/trump-budget-cuts-senate-filibuster)** > > Why do this? > [@](#): > > This is not a serious plan. It is not something that has much, or any, shot of becoming law. And while that in itself is not too remarkable in a budget document, the fact that an administration is putting out a doomed policy proposal this egregiously unpopular and easy to attack is remarkable. > > […] > > Obama didn’t propose these plans because he thought they could pass. He knew very well they couldn’t. But he also knew they were popular, and easy things for him and other Democrats to campaign on. People love to hear that the president wants to spend money to give them jobs in tough economic times, to make the rich pay their fair shares, to help their young kids get to pre-K without paying exorbitant tuition. > > That’s why Obama made doomed proposals. So why is Trump doing it? These plans are hardly crowd pleasers. Sure, he ran on the border wall, and defending veterans. But slashing Medicaid? He explicitly promised not to do that. Cutting the Agriculture Department? That’s a slap in the face to pro-Trump states like Iowa with large farm industries. Slashing medical research? That’s something it’s easy for patient groups to mobilize on, with very little to no political upside for Trump. In short, it’s exactly what one would expect from the great negotiator. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/5 "2017-05-23T04:19:52Z")
Yeah, it makes me less uneasy about whatever medicaid cut comes through. And, with that particular issue, it is personal, and the one thing that I’m worried I can’t weather. I want a big blowback that keeps Medicaid from being touched, or maybe even expanded. Or at least for it to last long enough that I get recertified for this year, which would last me until 2019 at least. ---
**Author:** ![ganthet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de0a6/32.png) [@ganthet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ganthet)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/6 "2017-05-23T04:22:36Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > In short, it’s exactly what one would expect from the great negotiator. It’s probably because Trump probably provided very little (if any) input on it, given that any federal budgeting plan is a very details-oriented process. This smells like it is almost entirely OMB Director Mulvaney’s planning, given that his and Ryan’s wet dream is to eventually abolish Medicaid, Medicare, privatize Social Security, and eventually do away with many farm subsidies. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/7 "2017-05-23T04:28:00Z")
> [@squidfood](#): > > Much has been said about Trump’s “negotiation skills”. Defenders of this budget might say “this is a clear negotiation tactic. He won’t get everything he wants, so he starts low.” There seems to be a notion in US politics that a “business man” is what is needed in the White House since they know how to run things efficiently. Unfortunately that does not hold up. Running a country is _nothing_ like running a business. Apples and oranges. Not comparable at all. So, Trump (or any president) starting at some absurd extreme is not a negotiating tactic. It is retarded. It would be a negotiating tactic if he had any chance of making it so…as he could as the head of a business…but that is not how politics works. I would submit that the LAST person we want as president is a business man. Politics and business are not the same thing. They do not work the same way and the business man will, as Trump is showing, be unable to adapt to an environment where he can’t just get his way by fiat. ---
**Author:** ![Crybaby\_Boobie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crybaby_boobie/32/545_2.png) [@Crybaby\_Boobie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crybaby_Boobie)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/8 "2017-05-23T18:16:20Z")
Apparently this budget already contains a $2 Trillion budget error: > [@](#): > > One of the ways Donald Trump’s budget claims to balance the budget over a decade, without cutting defense or retirement spending, is to assume a $2 trillion increase in revenue through economic growth. This is the magic of the still-to-be-designed Trump tax cuts. But wait — if you recall, the magic of the Trump tax cuts is also supposed to pay for the Trump tax cuts. So the $2 trillion is a double-counting error > **[Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error \[Updated\]](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-budget-based-on-usd2-trillion-math-error.html?mid=twitter_nymag)** > > Literally the largest and stupidest arithmetic mistake in the history of the federal budget. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/9 "2017-05-23T18:39:34Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > Running a country is _nothing_ like running a business. Well, with Trump involved both will probably include a bankruptcy. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/10 "2017-05-23T18:54:45Z")
**Trump budget seeks huge cuts to science and medical research, disease prevention** > **[Trump budget seeks huge cuts to science and medical research, disease prevention](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/22/trump-budget-seeks-huge-cuts-to-disease-prevention-and-medical-research-departments/)** > > National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, National Science Foundation and National Cancer Institute would see cuts under President Trump's 2018 proposed budget. Very bad proposal. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/11 "2017-05-23T20:09:21Z")
From the high level summary, it sounds like a pretty traditionally Republican budget of the sort one might write if he’s a true believer and has control over both branches of government. Now, it may well be that most of the Republicans in congress aren’t actual true believers, but I suspect that they’ll have a hard time making any real argument against what is supposed to be fundamental to their most professed beliefs. It might get diluted a little bit. But I wouldn’t view this as a low bid. It’s a sweet deal to encourage the base that they’re all real Republicans, trying to shrink government, force people to get a job, etc. after all. Whether it all makes sense or not, it’s good for votes. The real budget, that congress comes up with, will probably water it down a bit. But with all the hell Trump and the AHCA has put them through, they’ll probably keep the bill pretty faithful, because otherwise they’ll have done nothing for their base since getting voted in, in 2018. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/12 "2017-05-24T00:38:48Z")
The budget has a minor accounting error–just a couple trillion dollars: > [@](#): > > One of the ways Donald Trump’s budget claims to balance the budget over a decade, without cutting defense or retirement spending, is to assume a $2 trillion increase in revenue through economic growth. This is the magic of the still-to-be-designed Trump tax cuts. But wait — if you recall, the magic of the Trump tax cuts is also supposed to pay for the Trump tax cuts. So the $2 trillion is a double-counting error. > **[Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error \[Updated\]](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-budget-based-on-usd2-trillion-math-error.html)** > > Literally the largest and stupidest arithmetic mistake in the history of the federal budget. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/13 "2017-05-24T01:50:21Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > There seems to be a notion in US politics that a “business man” is what is needed in the White House since they know how to run things efficiently. > > Unfortunately that does not hold up. > > Running a country is _nothing_ like running a business. > > Apples and oranges. Not comparable at all. > > So, Trump (or any president) starting at some absurd extreme is not a negotiating tactic. It is retarded. > > It would be a negotiating tactic if he had any chance of making it so…as he could as the head of a business…but that is not how politics works. > > I would submit that the LAST person we want as president is a business man. Politics and business are not the same thing. They do not work the same way and the business man will, as Trump is showing, be unable to adapt to an environment where he can’t just get his way by fiat. I agree completely- it makes about as much sense as deciding you want a businessman to pilot your commercial air liner…and it also has predictably disastrous results, especially when the businessman is an egotistical blowhard that won’t let anyone that knows what they are doing near the controls. But for the benefit of those who still think having a businessman as president is a good idea, I will always enjoy pointing out what a horrible businessman Trump is. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-budget-a-good-or-bad-first-negotiation/787246/14 "2017-05-24T02:01:51Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > I’ve posted about this before, but Trump is the worst negotiator ever. He uses stupid tactics like the time he and Paul Ryan pretended to walk away from the healthcare bill, only to find that the salesman didn’t follow them into the parking lot… Lets not forget Trump’s tactic of ‘unless the democrats help us destroy the ACA and kick millions off of insurance, we are going to sabotage the ACA and kick people off of insurance until the democrats come to the bargaining table’. Which is absurd.