How Not To Bargain
The Trump Administration's first hundred days has been a masterclass at how to piss away every bargaining advantage possible.
These people have no idea what they're doing.
None. Nada. Nichts. Rien.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World believes that a similar approach should be used to analyze the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term — because whatever he’s doing ain’t working. Trump is now underperforming his polling during his first term. In other words, after his first hundred days he is more unpopular than any other president in the history of public opinion polling.
Why? Well, it’s entirely self-inflicted. Despite inheriting a pretty solid economy on January 20th, Trump is overseeing a faltering economy in which future expectations are at their lowest point in more than a decade. Amazon is poised to post information about how tariffs will affect prices on their site. The White House did not take this news well:
Almost all of the economic carnage is due to Donald Trump’s massive injection of uncertainty into the global economy. And a large fraction of that uncertainty has been due to Trump’s trade wars. So it worth comparing and contrasting Lessons from Coercive Bargaining 101 with what Trump has actually done.
LESSON #1: Hurt the target more than one’s self . The U.S. economy is much bigger than most other economies in the world, so the administration clearly believed that it had leverage over everyone else. And, to be fair, that is likely still true of a lot of smaller countries. The administration may well succeed in wringing concessions from India or South Korea.
It is far from obvious that this is true of China or the European Union however. Trump’s desperate attempts to signal to China that he wants to negotiate also does not seem to be working. And I can’t get this passage from the Washington Post ’s David Lynch and Jeff Stein out of my head:
“They never wanted tariffs that high on China,” said one person briefed on the White House’s thinking, who, like some others quoted in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. “Trump just went tit-for-tat with him. That’s him as a person — he wants to treat them as they treat us.”
Even if Trump eventually does roll back duties on Chinese-made goods to 60 percent, the overall U.S. average tariff rate would sit at 16 percent — a sharp rise from the pre-trade war figure of around 2.2 percent, according to a JPMorganChase analysis.
That increase would be more than 10 times what the U.S. experienced during Trump’s first term and would represent a tax hike of nearly $500 billion on American importers, according to the investment bank.
This kind of poor impulse control guarantees taking coercive actions that hurt the coercer more than the target. And with jittery financial markets and an impatient American public , the longer these tariffs are imposed the costlier they will be for the United States.
LESSON #2: Clearly articulate one’s demands . This ain’t rocket science! For a deal to be struck, the target needs to know what concessions would satisfy the coercer! Instead, there are widespread reports that even loyal allies don’t know what the Trump administration wants. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is even trying to claim that this is a purposeful strategy!
LESSON #3: Minimize expectations of future conflict . All else equal, when the target anticipates more frequent coercion attempts in the future, they will be less willing to acquiesce in the present. And if Trump has succeeded in one thing, it is in making the rest of the world believe he will coerce anyone and everyone again and again and again and again. For fuck’s sake, some of his first targets during his second term were signatories to a trade deal he negotiated during his first term!
Everyone expects Trump to break deals in the future — which disincentivizes negotiating any concessions in the present.
LESSON #4: Build a multilateral coalition . Multilateral economic sanctions tend to work better than unilateral sanctions. An institutionalized coalition of sanctioners can give a target pause in a way that unilateral action might not. And, of course, Donald Trump did the exact opposite of this. Only too late did they realize that maybe coordinated approach towards China could be a good idea. Instead, now it’s China going around talking to other countries about how crazy the United States is behaving.
As Noah Shachtman pointed out in the New York Times , “Provoking your enemies, alienating your friends and actively sabotaging your own defenses are no one’s idea of a sound national security plan. And yet this is the playbook that President Trump has apparently followed over the first 100 days of his second term.”
There are other lessons to draw, but you get the idea. The Trump administration’s bargaining strategy is being managed by an impulsive, short-tempered, ill-informed leader who faces zero pushback within his team. The result is that the country is likely to be in even worse shape a hundred days from now than it is in the present. Trump has provided a textbook case of how not to bargain.
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We're gonna get dictatorship AND the Hunger Games.
No we are not going to devolve into a dictatorship, etc. but this is certainly happening:
Of course, the demagogue con-man is blaming Biden for the recently announced negative GDP growth. And his supporters will no doubt believe him.
I think most of us see thru this pack of lies. But jayzus! He really does think we're stupid!
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I am hoping that his voters are not all ('stupid' ... rather: naive / ignorant / superficial) because we need a good portion of them to change their minds and be critical of Trump (rather than supportive). However, those who still support Trump given all he has done in his first 100 days are very likely to go down with the ship while defiantly defending and praising Trump.
But willfully so....
I hope you're right. Trump has said that we'll never need to vote again, and the
RepublicanFascist Party is working industriously to suppress voters rights, so......Trump and his associates are indeed working to consolidate power and turn the Executive branch into some kind of authoritarian power base. They will make some headway but will fail to get anything close to dictatorship.
Inch'allah!
As long as republicans are holding the reins (check and balance), nothing will stop him. Especially since he has shown total disregard to the judicial branch.
Voter positions influence congressional Rs. There will be a point where they fear voters more than they fear Trump. It does not take many votes to restore the check and balance of the Legislative branch on the Executive branch.
It does when both the House and the Senate have to swing left before anything can be done to stop him.
In just 100 days he has taken a strong right turn towards fascism, he's got 600 more before we might have a Congress to stop him.
The GOPTrump has only a tiny majority. That is what I am referring to. It does not take many GOP voters to turn from Trump.
Has he tried to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster and rewrite all the voting rules yet, or is that a level of super authoritarianism that he hasn't reached yet?
Instead of (absurdly) listing acts Trump has not done, pay attention to what he has done.
Stalin never claimed that a trade imbalance means a nation is "ripping it off" and then unilaterally impose absurd tariffs on all of its trading partners. (Stalin used tariffs sparingly and strategically ... a proper use.)
So does this mean Stalin was less of an authoritarian than Trump? (Rhetorical. The answer is obviously 'no'.)
Right. The point is those things are much more "authoritarian" than anything Trump has done and they are all mainstream democratic positions.
o does this mean Stalin was less of an authoritarian than Trump?
You seem to be overlooking that Congress authorized the President to set tariff rates and can revoke that authority any time it pleases. Trump or his supporters didn't create this power, it was legally delegated to the Presidency by Democratic Congresses decades ago.
You understand that Stalin's positions on tariffs are not what made him an authoritarian, right?
You can go back in history (to FDR and beyond) and find all the examples you wish and you will still not be able to match Trump's unilateral tariffs, his firing of inspectors general, his firing of DoJ employees who worked on his cases, his removal of security clearances, the firing of government employees in general who do not sing Trump's praises, surrounding himself with sycophants who will praise him and always tell him what he wants to hear, targeting political opponents and businesses (e.g. law firms) to abide by his rules or else, violating the law, refusing to abide by SCotUS rulings, withdrawal from international organizations, etc. ..., and more executive orders in the first 100 days than any PotUS in our history.
We have never (not even Andrew Jackson) had a PotUS who so brazenly defied the CotUS, broke our laws, and make EO as if he were a King making decrees.
Why do you continue to defend this scoundrel?
I have not overlooked it, I have made this point many times when I am criticizing Congress for failure to perform its constitutional duty of checking Executive power. I did not mention that Congress failed to impeach Trump after trying to steal the 2020 election either. I did not mention a great many other things. You are deflecting.
I understand that you dishonestly are pretending to have missed my point.