President Trump considers himself a master deal-maker and often made his bargaining prowess a selling point of his campaign. But negotiation experts and people who have negotiated with and against Trump who were interviewed for a Friday Politico report on Trump's deal-making skills aren't so sure.
They describe the president as a "confident, competitive, aggressive, impulsive, zero-sum, win-at-all-costs, transactional, unpredictable, often underinformed and ill-prepared, gut-following, ego-driven, want-it-and-want-it-now negotiator" whose actual record of deals is pretty mixed. (For example, he paid "$60 million more than even a high-end" appraisal value when he purchased New York's Plaza Hotel in 1988.)
"Is he truly a masterful negotiator?" said negotiation expert Marty Latz. "I would say not — in business, and certainly not to date as president."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Particularly telling is the arrangement Trump made with Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal. "Most writers for hire receive a flat fee, or a relatively modest percentage of any money the book earns," Schwartz said, but he got fully 50 percent of the $500,000 advance plus half of all royalties and nearly equal billing on the cover, with his name listed second but in the same size font.
"What should have been a great deal on a book about negotiation actually is one of the most interesting pieces of evidence that [Trump is] not a good negotiator," Harvard Business School negotiating professor Deepak Malhotra told Politico. "I don't think there's a better ghostwriting deal out there."
-
How clean-air efforts may have exacerbated global warmingUnder the Radar Air pollution artificially cooled the Earth, ‘masking’ extent of temperature increase
-
September 14 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday’s political cartoons include RFK Jr on the hook, the destruction of discourse, and more
-
Air strikes in the Caribbean: Trump’s murky narco-warTalking Point Drug cartels ‘don’t follow Marquess of Queensberry Rules’, but US military air strikes on speedboats rely on strained interpretation of ‘invasion’
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wifespeed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
