Art of the Bluff: The Limits of Trump’s Negotiation Strategy

The following article by Neil Irwin was posted on the New York Times website April 27, 2017:

Illustration by Antonio de Luca/The New York Times; Photo by Al Drago, via The New York Times

In 1987, the real estate developer Donald J. Trump wanted to buy an airplane. He sensed that the seller of the Boeing 727 was desperate, so he first offered a mere $5 million, “which was obviously ridiculously low,” he wrote in “Art of the Deal.” He boasts of buying the plane, worth $30 million new, for just $8 million.

This week, we saw the public policy equivalent of a $5 million offer for a $30 million plane.

The Trump administration demanded funding of its border wall as part of a deal to keep the government open, proposed a huge cut in taxes on businesses that would reduce government revenue by trillions, and leaked plans to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement to try to force Canada and Mexico to agree to better conditions. Continue reading “Art of the Bluff: The Limits of Trump’s Negotiation Strategy”