Threat Level: Trump
From Mar-a-Lago land grabs to full-on economic warfare, we unpack what works, what doesn't, and how to walkaway with your pants on..
The Weekly Walkaway highlights negotiation in its ‘good’, ‘bad’ and sometimes ‘downright ugly’ forms. Issue No. 109 (3rd April 2025)
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Grab your chocolate muffin Walkawayers and your tariff-free freshly ground coffee, because this week’s Weekly Walkaway dives into the not-so-subtle dark art of negotiating by coercion – Trump style.
The Ego, that is Trump, has made ‘the threat’ his signature move; from ‘bricking up’ beachfront views in Florida to launching a global tariff tantrum and yes, even the penguins, on some far away island, are feeling it this time.
Spoiler alert: Some threats have a habit of coming back and kicking you in the butt.
Whether you're sparring with procurement or your three-year-old over bath time, this post is packed with jaw-dropping real-world tactics, juicy negotiation lessons and just enough sarcasm to keep things entertaining.
Subscribe. Read on. And remember: Never negotiate out of fear… but never fear to call a bluff either… no I mean, but never fear to negotiate..
JFK said it best: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
So grab that coffee and let’s get into it.
Ai Generated Summary
(For those short on time)
This weeks Weekly Walkaway delves into Donald Trump's characteristic negotiation style, which relies heavily on threats and coercion. The article provides a strategic analysis on handling aggressive negotiation tactics like those employed by Donald Trump, emphasizing the importance of not capitulating to bullying but instead showing strength, resilience, and strategic acumen. Here are the key strategies outlined:
Strength and Reciprocity: The article illustrates that responding to threats with reciprocal measures can be effective, rather than capitulating. This reciprocal approach maintains balance and prevents one-sided concessions;
Resilience: Building resilience is crucial when faced with prolonged threats. This long-term resilience ensures you are not desperate for quick resolutions, which leads to poor decisions;
Building Coalitions: The text underscores the value of forming strong coalitions to counteract a bully's tactics. Reflecting a united front can eventually lead to achieving your a better outcome.
Breaking Their BATNAs: Understanding and weakening your opponent’s Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) is vital to make their position weaker and force them to relent.
Conditional Trading: Offering conditional concessions allows for negotiation without full capitulation. It involves giving your opponent a way out but only under specific conditions that also benefit you.
In summary, the article advocates for a negotiation stance that combines firmness and strategic flexibility, ensuring that responses to threats are measured, reciprocal, and aimed at maintaining leverage without yielding to undue pressure. This approach not only prevents capitulation but also positions negotiators to achieve more favorable outcomes even against aggressive opponents.
(Read on for more)
We negotiate all of the time so it makes sense to get good at it. Invest in yourself.
The Mar-a-Lago Ultimatum
In the early 1980’s, Trump set his sights on the lavish Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. When his initial $multi multi million offer was rejected, he resorted to a dramatic threat: he secretly purchased a small beachfront piece of land, directly in front of Mar-a-Lago and vowed to build an eyesore on it to block the mansion’s ocean view. He is famously quoted as saying:
“That was my first wall”.
Trump’s threat in this real estate negotiation was highly credible. He wasn’t just bluffing; he had already bought the land, proving he was willing to follow through with his threat. Showing not only the ability to but also the willingness to follow through boosted Trump's credibility in the eyes of the poor seller who had to weigh up the risk of a dramatic loss of value on their property if they did not sell.
This is proper “hardball”. The story is like it's straight out of a Hollywood movie but Trump is most certainly not the hero. It reveals the real person and one we all should be very worried about. But you don't need me to point that one out.
No doubt, Trump is a ‘robust’ property dealer. He manufactured a BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) and destroyed the seller’s alternatives (selling to someone else). With every day that passed, the estate’s market value dropped and Trump’s threat succeeded and in 1985 Trump scooped up Mar-a-Lago for a steal!
Negotiation theory suggests never rewarding the threat yet here the sellers saw no other, better, choice, so they folded, capitulated, unable to counter such an extreme tactic.
The lesson: When one side imposes extreme consequences (in this case literally bricking up your view), your best defence is a strong alternative or creative countermeasure, unfortunately for Mar-a-Lago’s owners, they had none, they were just unprepared for such extreme tactics.
It’s stuff like this that has emboldened Trump over the years. It paid off, it cemented his belief that outrageous threats get you big wins.. Even in global geo-political arenas!
We negotiate all of the time so it makes sense to get good at it. Invest in yourself.
The Great Government Shutdown
The US Capitol stands silent! It’s 2018 going into 2019. There has been a funding impasse and it leads to the longest government shutdown in American history.
In December 2018, Trump strikes again and takes the US government hostage!
The issue? Funding for his proposed border wall with Mexico. Trump threatens that he will not sign any budget that lacks the billions and billions that he wants for his ‘wall’.
He was happy to grind the government to a halt and plunged it into a 35 day shutdown.
But in a humiliating lesson the difference between politics and real estate negotiation became clear. His threat and coercion has very little credibility and is found to be weak vs talented political negotiators.
As the shutdown dragged on, cracks in the credibility of his threat widened as public opinion turned sharply against him and the US voters started to blame him for the debacle.
The longer the shutdown continued, the more Trump’s BATNA deteriorated. It quickly became obvious it was only a bluff he just couldn’t carry on.
In the end, Trump had to back down without securing the funds. Humiliated and hating everyone who ‘beat’ him. His bluster and threat had failed, instead he’d inflicted pain on government workers and the economy and sapped his own future political leverage.
The Lesson: The Democrats’ handling of Trump’s threat was simply to call the bullies bluff. They refused to yield and made Trump bear the political heat. Their BATNA was simply to wait, they knew a reopened government without ‘the wall’ funding was an outcome Trump would have to accept eventually, because the alternative was unsustainable. They just held firm and denied Trump the validation that such threats work. If they hadn't they would have created an even bigger monster! But by not giving something, not offering a concession, however small, so he could save face, they also created an aggrieved enemy, one whose ego had been bruised and would not rest until he’d had their pound of flesh!
Trade Wars
In 2018, Trump unleashed a barrage of tariffs on China, kicking off a tit-for-tat trade war. This was negotiation by mutually assured financial destruction.. Compounded by Covid.
In response, China used its own threats of retaliatory tariffs on the US and hinted at cutting off rare earth metals. The negotiation turned into a high-stakes game of chicken, each side testing the other’s resolve. Sounds familiar, right?
By late 2019, the US had imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods, making the threat of “going to 100% coverage” very credible. Markets flip flopped with each new aggressive tweet, indicating a broad belief that he meant it.
From China’s perspective, the credibility lay not just in Trump’s words but in his unpredictability; he had walked away from interim agreements with Mexico and Canada twice already, opting to “double down” and demand more at the last minute.
But tariffs were also hurting the US economy. China knew Trump would eventually face pressure from US businesses and of course the voters whose prices were rising. So while the threat of ever-increasing tariffs was real, China questioned whether Trump could endure a full-on trade war.
The showdown was risky for both but who had the most resilience and longevity? China.
The Lesson: After over a year of dueling tariffs the two sides signed a trade deal in 2020 which settled some but importantly not all of the issues. Trump ‘extracted’ significant purchase commitments but ultimately the agreement was a truce, a ceasefire, which became insignificant due to Covid which wiped out the ‘extracted purchase commitments.
(hmmm.. Now I write it.. It does seem suspect.. hmm??!)
US businesses and of course the voters had paid billions in tariff costs and in return had only agreed a pause to trading hostilities.
China’s response to Trump’s threats was a mixture of cool calm reciprocity and resilience; China was willing and able to play the long game; they stimulated their domestic market, sourced from other countries and retaliated proportionally but importantly they had offered THE EGO an off ramp.. A way for Trump to save face but at the same time they had learnt a valuable lesson - they now knew ‘The Trump’ and how predictable he would be if there was a future negotiation.
What no one had counted on was how soon and how vindictive Trump would be. He must have his pound of flesh.
We negotiate all of the time so it makes sense to get good at it. Invest in yourself.
Today - The Tariff Tsunami of 2025
And then to today, April 2025, Trump has just issued a sweeping set of global tariffs aimed at practically every trading partner in the world, including a tiny Island no one has ever heard of where only penguins live. LOL.
He’s called it “Liberation Day”. Ironic!
He’s holding the global economy to ransom. He has taken us all hostage!
This is Trump’s vindictive retaliation. Negotiation-by-sledgehammer, a threat to wreck the status quo of global trade unless ‘partners’ come to the table, bow to the king and make concessions weighted in his favour; be it buying more American goods or signing new deals. It is an unprecedented gamble that has rattled the markets.
We all know that the threat of tariffs are his hallmark, his one trick pony, since 2018 so yes, he’s reliable and therefore credible. We all know he’s not bluffing, but after being so predictable will this same ol tactic endure and will the US business and voters be willing to suffer the consequences.. again.
At best he’ll gain a little cash. At worst he’ll send the US into depression and the rest us along with him!
Trump has bet that America’s larger economy could endure the expected pain longer than any other country and IMO this is a debatable assumption. He’d need another term (and more) and he’d also need to have total control over the country and its people - a dictator, if you will.
(hmm.. this also sounds familiar, now I write it!)
IMO Trump has also used a military tactic of burning his invasion ships on the beach leaving his army with nowhere else to go but forwards! After having to back down in the last trade war with China he is having to show a massive commitment to show his credibility this time by burning the whole world economy.
IMO Trump has segmented his market place. He has a particular sum of cash in mind as his goal and he knows some will call his bluff and wait him out and others, weaker ones, will pull their pants down and either compromise or fully capitulate. Those wins he will claim as ‘MAGA’ or now ‘ Making US Wealthy Again’. He will be able to claim his pound of flesh and legitimise his being.
Some partners will achieve exemptions and mini-deals to lower the tariffs for good behaviour. Some will negotiate and validate Trump’s threat but China, the main character in this episode of TRUMP, The EGO, is well prepared, they have been waiting for this day. They have experienced it all before and they have resilience and long memories.
But even if these threat based negotiations result in even modest concessions from some countries and larger ones from other, less powerful, countries he will still claim victory.
The Lesson: When faced with an overwhelming threat be prepared to retaliate, fail to firm up only emboldens the threat maker. You’ve got to be prepared for the classic reciprocal response, but signal a willingness to make conditional concessions.
Or if you are more powerful and prepared you can be tougher and condemn, execute threats of your own and seek coalitions to break their BATNAs and then wait them out!
When one side drops the nuclear option don’t panic, don’t pull your pants down. Instead, create a counter-threat to show resolve and at the same time offer the great big EGO a face-saving path for the ’threatener’ (is that actually a word) to achieve some of his goals through negotiation. A true balance of The Diplomat - the balance of strength and flexibility. Just whatever you do make sure it’s conditional. Don't pull your pants down; don’t capitulate, that's not Negotiation. And remember Trump is not a Diplomat, he is a Dealer. A real estate dealer used to extreme tactics, so you know what to expect.. start preparing!
OK Walkawyers, have a great weekend and let's see what happens in next week's episode of TRUMP, The Ego!
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate
We negotiate all of the time so it makes sense to get good at it. Invest in yourself.