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The headline is largely the gospel according to Donald Trump. I wrote an article on this topic a few weeks ago but it is worth exploring in a broader context. His deal making is a continuing source of angst to those on the left of the political spectrum, as they don’t do deals – they wouldn’t know how. That is the stark difference between a career politician (most are on the left) running a country and someone applying a business methodology to the political process. Politics also adds in a social arm to be considered also.
What we are watching with Trump is his strategies, every single one of them, having the basis of making a deal. The mistake other politicians make is to take his initial utterances at face value. Rather than initial anger, a better course of action is to ask, ‘What does he really want?’ The answer is to engage with the man: find out what his real intentions are and what are his bottom lines. In order to deal with Trump effectively, you have to try to understand him and his inner workings.
Greenland, as I mentioned in a previous article, was an excellent example. There was no need to rush troops to the island and there was no need to rush military hardware. This looked like one NATO member attacking the others – it wasn’t. This looked like Trump threatening to annex Greenland – it wasn’t. If you understood Trump, you would know this was strategising to get a deal. Think about it: if Trump had annexed Greenland, he would have blown up his argument in relation to China invading Taiwan. They would have used his excuse and turned it on him. ‘We require Taiwan for strategic purposes.’ I’ve no doubt Trump worked that one out.
There are a few who do understand how Trump operates. One is Esther McVey, a UK Conservative member of parliament and a columnist for the Daily Express. Recently she wrote an article with the headline “Negotiation is the real deal for Donald”. She wrote: “With Donald Trump you always need to read the message within the message. Everything is a negotiation to him and he tends to go in big then pulls back to achieve what he always wanted.”
She said: “If his threats to take over Greenland and impose tariffs on Europe of 10 per cent rising to 25 per cent by June – as stated on his social media site – became a reality rather than a negotiating tool, then he’s lost the plot and threatens the future of NATO. However, my take would be he wants Europe to fulfil their promise of increasing their spend on defence. The UK will be £28 billion short by the end of the decade, and Trump is right to be fed up that US taxpayers are always picking up too much of the tab for Europe’s security.”
Esther is spot on. The Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, immediately came to the same conclusion, sat down with Trump, and did the deal on Greenland giving Trump what he wanted: a greater military access to ensure better protection and also possible access to the mineral wealth. On the domestic front, Trump was able to deliver a message of further protecting America. Rutte tried to convey the necessity of doing the deal to European leaders – they didn’t want to know because Trump Derangement Syndrome is alive and well in Europe. What Rutte realises, as other European politicians should, is that NATO as a defence force cannot operate effectively without the support of the United States. As Rutte told them, “If you think that, then dream on”.
The Gatestone Institute, an international policy council, says what Trump’s critics miss is his rather unique set of problem-solving skills that allow him to tackle complex problems in unorthodox ways. While he makes nice with China’s Xi Jinping, saying China and America are economically tied together for the foreseeable future, he is at the same time destroying China’s investments in Panama and its energy partnerships in Venezuela and Iran. Gatestone likens Trump to former President Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower said by making a problem he couldn’t solve bigger, rather than smaller, he could then begin to see the outlines of a solution.
Someone else who has an understanding of how Trump works is the Italian PM Giorgia Meloni. She is Trump’s ‘go-to’ leader in Europe and he is always just a phone call away. She told him tariffs were a bad idea and she also told other European leaders behind closed doors that fighting Trump was a bad idea. In her words, Europe has everything to lose from a conflict with America. Smart lady. There is every indication Iran is about to find out the truth of those words. Another on the same page as Meloni is Prime Minister Viktor Orban, of Hungary.
At the recent Munich Security Conference American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio gave a speech outlining America’s willingness to address the world’s problems, preferably and hopefully, with Europe. He spoke at length about the historical ties that the two continents shared, saying America was a child of Europe (applause). America could go it alone but preferred to do it with Europe. He stated that America wanted a strong Europe, in order to, together, deter the ambitions of adversaries. It was a speech of reassurance to Europe, on behalf of President Trump, that America was its friend and wanted a strong alliance in all areas, not just militarily.
Without using the word deal, Rubio was offering one: for Europe to organise itself back to a position of strength and increase its defence spending so it and America could become joint and formidable forces in the protection of the West. He admitted to America (read Trump) being at times a little direct and urgent but said it was because America cared deeply about the future of Europe and its own. What he was suggesting, couched in his own words, was nations should adopt a similar policy to Trump’s ‘America First’, where the economies provide the needs locally and are not reliant on other countries. From that remark, read China.
The reality is most of life is about making a deal of some kind or other. We are used to thinking of deals purely in commercial terms, but, as well as financial and economic ones, there are political/legal and informal deals. Trump, while specialising in financial ones, is now involved with those of a political nature and he applies the same strategies in both areas. This is what purely political leaders are not used to and find difficult to understand. Trump is not your career politician. He is an entrepreneur applying principles used in that area to solve political problems. This is where his use of threatening tariffs to sort out wars between countries has been, to some extent, effective.
In my opinion the world needs more Trumps: people in politics who are not politicians – people who try to solve problems by thinking outside the square. People who are prepared to deal to adversaries and give their friends a ‘boot up the backside’ if needed, as was the case with Europe and NATO on matters of defence. The United Nations needs to be dealt to in a similar manner and encouraged to reorganise itself to be an organisation fit for purpose in today’s world.
For too long the West and its economies, particularly in relation to defence, have fallen into something of a malaise. It has taken Trump, with his threatening, bombastic, aggressive, direct and urgent approach, to cause the West to awaken from its slumber. He is offering, largely through his America First policy, deals that are about working with America for the benefit of the West as a whole. The wise thing to do, as Giorgia Meloni has pointed out, is not to show angst to the man but to get around the table and negotiate with him. That is what he wants: to do a deal. And in talking, rather than expressing angst, lies the art of the deal.
