Donald Trump’s negotiation tactics are proudly explained in his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal. He claims the work is second-only to the Bible in its revelatory message.
Anchoring the Economy
Trump’s tariff policy reflects that strategy:
I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.
It is classic anchoring. Propose something extreme, then settle for less.
Recent tariff pauses and warmer rhetoric with chief target China suggest Liberation Day was always an anchoring ploy. And we’ll see whether it was all unnecessary madness, spooking the markets and bringing only superficial concessions to satisfy Trump’s ego. Or the bedrock of a strategy to revive America’s export industry.
Foreign Policy
But Trump is also employing his 1987 wisdom in foreign policy, where he has long believed himself a worthy winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. “If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds”, he said last October.
Acting so brazenly as one’s own chief lobbyist doesn’t detract from Trump’s real advances. The Abraham Accords, brokered in his first term, were the biggest achievement in Arab-Israeli relations since Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Cutting through Diplomacy
It owes much to Trump’s more casual approach. All big entities get tunnel vision on the way things should be done. Power structures and rules get internalised. And diplomacy has its own kind of corporate jargon.
Trump cut through that act when he excluded Palestine from Israeli-Arab negotiations. Instead, he went directly to Arab nations and asked what they really wanted. So the UAE and Bahrain got weapons, Morocco recognition over Western Sahara, and Sudan removed from a list of state sponsored terrorism.
Middle East Whiplash
Whether it’s caprice, or an underlying strategy, this personal dealmaking breaks free of traditional bonds and grievances. Just look at Trump’s approach to Israel. Sometimes Trump is its staunchest cheerleader. He posted an AI-generated video of Gaza reimagined as a Dubai-style resort and positioned himself to the right of Netanyahu, questioning why Israel ever gave back Gaza.
But now he has gone cold on his one-time buddy. He blanked him on his recent Middle East tour and instead cosied up to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria. He called the President of the latter, former Al-Qaeda commander Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, a “young attractive tough guy”.
In a speech at the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh, he decried US interventionism, promising prosperity over judgement and conflict. He said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was the country’s greatest representative and professed to liking him “too much”, if anything.
Meanwhile, his only comments for Netanyahu were a warning that “people in Gaza are starving”. And Axios reports on Trump’s frustration with Israel’s ongoing war and his instructions that they “wrap it up”.
Friend or Foe?
It’s similar to his dealings with Russia and Ukraine. February’s Zelensky meeting marked a nadir in those relations. But a chat last month at the Pope’s funeral had completely different optics. Zelensky praised it as the “best” and “most substantive” meeting yet.
Even Trump’s much mooted bromance with Putin has similar yo-yo tendencies. At times, Putin is a “smart guy” relieved of responsibility for starting the war. But he also questioned if Putin is “just tapping me along” and “has to be dealt with differently”.
The uncertainty Trump breeds checks countries’ actions. Removed from any official diplomatic dogma or moralising, no one can guarantee his approval nor wrath. Traditional US enemies cannot fester in victimhood, believing they will never get a fair hearing. Neither can allies be sure of support.
Playing to Extremes
Anchoring his comments at the extremities throws off familiar criticisms. Biden could never restrain Netanyahu because he was so vulnerable to criticism from America’s influential Israel lobby. The Democrats are indelibly associated with the anti-semitic campus protests that glorify Hamas.
Trump, who has stripped university funding over these same protests, is immune from such accusations. Moving speedily from Israel’s greatest friend to a critic throws people off balance. And he is now in a far more influential position to demand concessions from Israel than previous presidents.
Peace through Strength
Israel is far less gung-ho if it believes it could really be abandoned by the US. Just as Ukraine has to negotiate under similar fears. Yet traditional enemies know it’s not all one way traffic. In Saudi Arabia, Trump immediately juxtaposed “I don’t like war” with a typically hyperbolic comment on the strength of the US military:
We have the greatest military, by the way, in the history of the world. And I rebuilt our military in my first four years and rebuilt it into the most powerful military there is, and you saw that when I knocked out ISIS in three weeks.
As he now offers an olive branch to the Iranians on a new nuclear deal, he’ll remind the world that his pacifism isn’t absolute. He may recall his 2020 airstrike on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Weaponising Narratives
Trump doesn’t rely on threats alone. He weaponises the modern news cycle, shaping perceptions through cable news and social media faster than others can react.
That manipulation derails his opponents. So-called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) weakens their grip on reality. We saw this in the presidential race. In their new book Original Sin, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson chronicle Biden’s physical and mental decline in the White House, and his staff’s efforts to hide that decline from voters.
Now diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, it’s increasingly clear to everyone that Biden was unfit to run. And conspiracies that the diagnosis was already known and covered up are credible, given the level of healthcare afforded to the president.
TDS caused Democrats’ disastrous decision-making, unwisely nominating Biden before swapping in a poor and unpopular candidate at the last minute. Now Democrats are tarred with the brush of conspiracy or incompetence.
The Madman Theory
Errant judgement is the consequence of what Nixon called the “madman theory”. Unpredictability destabilises, causing opponents to overreact or miscalculate in an attempt to bring things back under control.
Anyone who has worked with this kind of character recognises the power in chaos: endless WhatsApps, urgent tangents, warm one minute and curt the next. It leaves you reactive, working on their terms.
Trump the Roman Emperor
Chaos, when backed by power, can be profoundly effective. It’s not new in politics. One of its greatest operators, the Roman Emperor Augustus perfected the same blend of performance and control two millennia ago. He is said to have asked on his deathbed:
Have I played my part well in this comedy of life? Then applaud as I exit.
Like Trump, he understood politics as performance. And he too was underestimated by elites and technocrats, who didn’t believe cunning compensated for experience and military prowess.
But Augustus left behind a durable imperial structure. He gave way to a dynasty that would last centuries. Trump will surely anoint his own Tiberius when he leaves office but he cannot guarantee his succession.
And he presides over a superpower in doubt. He may extract short-term leverage, but is the long-term trajectory Pax Americana? Or dollar and trust erosion?
Can Trump, like the author of his favourite book, remake the world in his image? Or is he merely a passing idol, fed by sacrifice, but destined to fade from scripture?
