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On the Art of the Deal
For most businesspeople, most of the time, the best deal is one in which all parties walk away feeling as though they’ve won. That sort of deal encourages people to come back and make another deal in the future, which is good for business in the long run. If you’re trying to achieve such a win-win deal, the techniques of Getting to Yes apply: separate personalities from the problem being solved, be open and objective about your needs, don’t commit prematurely to any specific solution to those needs, etc. You want to avoid making the other party feel bullied or taken advantage of, because those things make hir unlikely to want to deal with you again. And you want to avoid forcing anybody on either side to choose between a deal and “saving face”.
For Donald Trump, the world is zero-sum: there is no such thing as a win-win deal, so the best deal is one in which you win as much as possible and (therefore) the other party loses as much as possible. That person will never want to make another deal with you again, but that’s OK because you won a lot from hir this time. Since the goal is different, the tactics are naturally different too. You don’t want to separate people and their relationship from the problem, because the whole point of the exercise is to form a clear dominance-submission relationship between people; that is the problem. You do want both sides to commit early to mutually incompatible solutions, because then when the other side backs down, it’s clear to all viewers who won and who lost face. And to make sure you’re the one who wins, you need to go in with, very visibly, much more leverage than the other party. Making the other party feel bullied and taken advantage of is not something to avoid, but the central strategy: that’s how you get a favorable-to-you deal. This is why Trump has withdrawn from so many multilateral agreements, in favor of a series of one-on-one agreements in each of which he’s the "bigger dog" and can (allegedly) get whatever he wants. (Although I gather those one-on-one agreements haven’t really been happening either during his administration.) And now he’s announced steel and aluminum import tariffs, but temporarily exempted Canada and Mexico so he has an additional threat to hold over them while renegotiating NAFTA. If that works out, he’ll presumably do the same with other trading partners: kidnap their dog, then demand favorable-to-him terms on something else as ransom for giving back what should never have been kidnapped in the first place.
The best strategy for the world in dealing with this is probably what the other eleven TPP members did yesterday: go on without the U.S. to make clear that if the U.S. demands unfair terms, they too can walk away. (What Getting to Yes calls BATNA: your "best alternative to a negotiated agreement", i.e. your criterion for walking away.) Although the U.S. may individually be the biggest dog, it’s not bigger than a bunch of other dogs together. This applies not only to trade policy, but pretty much every area of international relations: if the U.S. doesn’t want to participate in the community of nations as an equal, or even as first-among-equals, just ignore the U.S. for a few years until it comes back to its senses.
For Donald Trump, the world is zero-sum: there is no such thing as a win-win deal, so the best deal is one in which you win as much as possible and (therefore) the other party loses as much as possible. That person will never want to make another deal with you again, but that’s OK because you won a lot from hir this time. Since the goal is different, the tactics are naturally different too. You don’t want to separate people and their relationship from the problem, because the whole point of the exercise is to form a clear dominance-submission relationship between people; that is the problem. You do want both sides to commit early to mutually incompatible solutions, because then when the other side backs down, it’s clear to all viewers who won and who lost face. And to make sure you’re the one who wins, you need to go in with, very visibly, much more leverage than the other party. Making the other party feel bullied and taken advantage of is not something to avoid, but the central strategy: that’s how you get a favorable-to-you deal. This is why Trump has withdrawn from so many multilateral agreements, in favor of a series of one-on-one agreements in each of which he’s the "bigger dog" and can (allegedly) get whatever he wants. (Although I gather those one-on-one agreements haven’t really been happening either during his administration.) And now he’s announced steel and aluminum import tariffs, but temporarily exempted Canada and Mexico so he has an additional threat to hold over them while renegotiating NAFTA. If that works out, he’ll presumably do the same with other trading partners: kidnap their dog, then demand favorable-to-him terms on something else as ransom for giving back what should never have been kidnapped in the first place.
The best strategy for the world in dealing with this is probably what the other eleven TPP members did yesterday: go on without the U.S. to make clear that if the U.S. demands unfair terms, they too can walk away. (What Getting to Yes calls BATNA: your "best alternative to a negotiated agreement", i.e. your criterion for walking away.) Although the U.S. may individually be the biggest dog, it’s not bigger than a bunch of other dogs together. This applies not only to trade policy, but pretty much every area of international relations: if the U.S. doesn’t want to participate in the community of nations as an equal, or even as first-among-equals, just ignore the U.S. for a few years until it comes back to its senses.