Alan Zendell, April 24, 2025

Courses in effective negotiation stress that the most successful outcomes are those in which both parties walk away feeling like they won something. That’s the true Art of the Deal, regardless of anything Tony Schwartz (Donald Trump’s ghostwriter) said in the book Trump didn’t write. Achieving a win-win in a negotiation is simple in principle. Assuming both parties negotiate in good faith, the most important tasks of a negotiator are to actively listen to the other side’s needs and desires, treat each other with respect, and build trust so each side believes the other wants a fair outcome.

Effective good-faith negotiators avoid anxiety producing interactions, because it’s well established that anxious people are likely to make bad decisions. You might convince an anxious opponent to accept a deal they hate, but that usually leads to trouble down the road. Remember how well the Treaty of Versaille worked? It’s much healthier and more effective to build the foundations for a long-term relationship based on trust and mutual courtesy and respect. That requires each negotiator to expect and accept compromise. It’s okay to specify certain things as non-negotiable deal breakers, but they should be exceptions, not the basis of a final agreement.

Negotiation training often spends more time on “Don’ts” than “Dos.” Most of the Don’ts are obvious. Don’t trash talk behind the other side’s back. Don’t be arrogant or supercilious. Don’t be rude. Don’t insult your negotiating partners. Don’t make demands you know are unacceptable to the other side. Don’t allow emotion to drive a negotiating position. Don’t try to embarrass or intimidate your opponent. Don’t argue your case in the social or broadcast media.

An important corollary of all the above is motivation. To achieve an acceptable agreement each side must understand the other’s motivation, which brings us to Donald Trump’s trade war. Very few Americans favor trade agreements that take advantage of America. They understand that many of the trade imbalances we see today began as deliberate, generous attempts to help our allies recover from the devastation of World War 2.

As our allies grew stronger, previous administrations probably should have been constantly renegotiating our trade agreements, but it doesn’t usually work that way. What more typically happens, even when parties act in good faith, is that unbalanced agreements remain in effect until anger and resentment cause one side to act precipitously and inappropriately.

Even when that happens, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Some countries, specifically China, have no regard for rules and international law. China regularly pirates intellectual property and does virtually anything short of armed conflict to achieve its economic goals. Combining that with the profit motives of American manufacturers who move their factories and assembly lines to countries that don’t care whether their workers earn a living wage, results in the situation that exists today.

We would all love to see the Trump administration negotiate deals that strengthen our manufacturing and lower prices for Americans, but as Trump’s first hundred days rush to an end, his efforts have come to naught, and the reason is clear. Trump is not motivated by a good faith desire to score a win-win. In Trump’s universe, only his side can win. If Trump’s people really wanted fairer trade agreements, they, and Trump specifically wouldn’t be violating every item on the Don’ts list and ignoring the Dos.

As with everything he does, Trump’s trade war is the ultimate expression of his narcissism. For him, a successful negotiation ends with everyone else vanquished and crawling back to him in supplication. But he failed to heed the first lesson learned by Lemuel Gulliver in his famous travels. No matter how  big and tough you are, you can’t take on the entire world and expect everyone to cave in to your demands. Trump has always played the divide and conquer game, but this time, he seems to have badly miscalculated. Instead of falling like dominoes, the nations attacked by Trump’s tariffs are banding together in defiance.

Bullying, flinging insults, and ambushing allies on worldwide television are the worst possible ways to achieve what Trump claims to want. What he really wants is something else entirely. Trump desperately needs the entire world to bow to him, and that is not going to happen. If Congressional Republicans don’t start standing up and stop rubber-stamping his actions, Americans will be the ultimate losers in this unnecessary war.

Trump’s billionaire supporters and well-respected Conservative corporate leaders are sounding the alarm, just in case the volatility of the world’s financial markets escaped our attention. Who knows what assurances Trump offers in private, or how much he’s helping his wealthy friends profit from that volatility? His public statements have produced chaos, confusion, and losses as high as twenty percent in Americans’ retirement savings without showing a single successful outcome. The final carnage will depend on how long it takes for a few of Trump’s key people to jump ship.