The truth is Trump is a bad negotiator. He's easily played. He's also predictably dishonest. The only real move is to string him along, which he seems to be glad to do, particularly if someone flatters or threatens to punch him.
The truth is Trump is a bad negotiator. He's easily played. He's also predictably dishonest. The only real move is to string him along, which he seems to be glad to do, particularly if someone flatters or threatens to punch him.
He negotiates in bad faith. No deal is final. He will change the terms to meet his whims.
The Chinese understand. Notice how there are no soybean purchases from China this year. They do not trust the US on important things like food.
I assumed the soybean thing was more about sending a message. Soybeans are the number one US export crop. Shutting down the market is a big financial blow, makes the trade deficit worse, and angers farmers who otherwise would have happily sold to the Chinese.
> He negotiates in bad faith
Plenty of great negotitors across history did, too. Trump gets played. Repeatedly. Predictably. His political instincts have been sharp enough that I'm increasingly chalking this up to age, but maybe he just had a better team around him the first time around.
He singlehandedly annihilated the US soybean market.
That's not a good thing. Lots of farmers going bankrupt now.
But his crony buddies stand to benefit from farmers going to bankrupt. Makes it difficult to understand if this is incompetence or intentional malice at play...
> He singlehandedly annihilated the US soybean market.
Again... He's done this twice now.
No. It's explicitly self-destructive. He gets off on setting things on fire, including himself.
> increasingly chalking this up to age
I've always had high regard for Trump as a talented scumbag grifter of note.
He's been noticeably and increasingly off game since it seemed he was only campaigning for re-election to avoid a mountain of looming bad legal outcomes.
Much of his early second term "wins" I've marked as momentum success from having a ready to go game plan care of the Project 2025 crowd. His carry through on tariffs, dodging Epstein complications, handling free speech issues, etc. have been more chaotic than cunning.
Do you even think he's sitting in on these negotiations? He can't remember Ishiba's name and just called him 'Mr Japan' when occasionally asked questions about him. My impression (and I've been watching these specific trade negotiations pretty closely) was that Scott Bessent was doing all the legwork and the Japanese seemed perfectly happy to talk to him instead of Trump. Whatever one might think of the policy arguments, Bessent seems coherent and professional whereas Trump comes off as shallow and erratic. I find it hard to imagine having hours-long focused and strategic conversation with him on a dry topic like trade policy.
It's an musing irony that Japan is a demographically much older society than the US and LDP in particular looks like a gerontocratic party, but between factionalism and parliamentary instability they actually cycle through leaders pretty efficiently