Why Trump’s strategy of negotiation through intimidation is a losing one

President Trump is actually quite a bad negotiator. To understand the president’s negotiation style, ignore his ghost-written “Art of The Deal” and take a look at a book called “Winning Through Intimidation.” Though it’s largely forgotten now, it was a bestseller when originally published back in 1973.

The book — written by a real estate broker — has a simple message. There are two kinds of people in the business world: the people who get screwed over and the people who do the screwing. The No.1 reason people get taken advantage of is that they get intimidated by the other side.

So, if you want good deals, you should be intimidating. And the best way to do that, according to this book, is by cultivating an intimidating image, being aggressive and taking extreme negotiating positions.

If you had to sum up Trump’s negotiating style in one sentence, this would be it.

The irony is that the book also cautions against being intimidated by other negotiators, a lesson Trump hasn’t learned. Trump is regularly intimidated by those he perceives as more wealthy or more powerful. How else do you explain his public deference to Elon Musk or his fawning over Vladimir Putin?

On top of that, Trump is too emotional and too easily manipulated to be a good negotiator. Even his supporters admit that. For example, JD Vance cautioned Volodymyr Zelensky not to criticize Trump, saying, “The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media ... everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.”

Think about that for a moment. Trump is trying to negotiate a deal in one of the biggest, most dangerous conflicts that currently exist on the planet. And Vance, his own vice president, is cautioning everyone to tread carefully, because the president of the United States might go off half-cocked and do something foolish if he gets mad.

That’s not the kind of person you want taking the lead in a high-stakes negotiation — or any negotiation, really.

But Donald Trump’s biggest flaw as a negotiator is that he’s only got one speed. It’s like the old joke about how if you're a carpenter, every problem is a nail and every solution is a hammer. A good negotiator recognizes that different situations call for different approaches. Trump, however, treats everything like a one-off deal with someone he wants to squeeze as hard as he possibly can.

Trump’s efforts to strong-arm Zelensky into an agreement that would hand the U.S. a 50 percent interest in the Ukrainian economy in exchange for nothing at all is an excellent example of this negotiating style. Trump combined an outrageous opening offer with threats to punish Ukraine if Zelensky didn’t immediately accept his terms. When Zelensky balked, Trump attacked him personally, claiming Ukraine had started the war and that he was an unelected dictator whom everybody in Ukraine hated.

That’s an utterly shameful way to treat an ally and a friend, but neither of those words have a meaning in Trump’s taxonomy. For Trump, there are only people you can bully and people you can’t.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not criticizing Trump here from a moral perspective but from an economic one. There are situations where you really can get the highest return from being obnoxious and ruthlessly exploiting your negotiating partner. But there are other situations, especially when you will have to deal with that person again, where scorched-earth negotiating imposes huge costs down the line.

That’s the problem with what Trump is trying to do to American allies like Canada. It’s easy to get a great deal out of someone who trusts and relies on you — once. But after you abuse that relationship, they will take steps to make sure they are never in that position again.

The perception that America is a trusted partner whose positions and alliances don’t depend on who won the last election has made us both safer and richer. But by suddenly turning on our allies, Trump is burning through 80 years of carefully built-up American trust and influence in a few weeks. This may get him a couple of “good deals” in the short term, but at what price?

Trump is trying to manage foreign relations the same way he used to do real estate deals. But on the international stage, there are wide-ranging consequences that can't be reduced to dollars and cents. Trump thinks he can slap a “for sale” sign on everything from Ukraine to Gaza. But some things aren't about property values. They’re just about values. The shining city on a hill is not just real estate.

Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.

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