Posted on February
8, 2025
"Opening Bid" Blarney
Donald Trump's self-fulfilling
prophecies
by
Daniel
Clark
If there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, it's
that he's the greatest, smartest, toughest, bestiest negotiator of all
time. So everybody keeps telling us, including
himself. Okay, so he hasn't come up with
that 24-hour solution to the war in Ukraine that he promised. When he said he would shut down the
government until the Democrats gave him the funding for a border wall, that
didn't work out so well, either. Then
there was his deal with the Taliban, in which the sophisticated, New York real
estate magnate got royally snookered by a bunch of vermin-ridden,
goat-molesting cavemen. And of course,
after years of demonizing NAFTA, he negotiated the USMCA, which is about as
unlike NAFTA as The Hangover Part II is unlike The Hangover.
Aside
from all that, he's been brilliant! At
least he might seem to be, ever since his supporters began deploying the
"opening bid" defense on his behalf. You
never give away your true position at the outset of a negotiation, the argument
goes. Your opening bid is going to be an
unrealistic demand, meant to pull the center of the debate closer to your
desired conclusion. Thus, the man who "tells
it like it is" has morphed into the man who has to be taken "seriously, but not
literally."
According to this logically inverted paradigm, Trump will
inevitably be the winner in any deal he makes, precisely because the outcome is
not what he had demanded in the first place.
Whatever the result, it becomes exactly what the Art of the Deal
author had wanted all along. It's a
wonder we don't see Trump supporters walking around in red hats that say, "HE
MEANT TO DO THAT."
Take the recent tariff negotiations with Mexico and
Canada. Constitutionally, the power to
impose tariffs belongs to the legislature, but it has delegated that authority
to the president under certain circumstances, through several pieces of
legislation. In this case, Trump cited
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which empowers the
president to regulate commerce with other nations when we are in a state of
national emergency because of a foreign threat.
He issued an executive order declaring the smuggling of fentanyl to be a
national emergency, thereby justifying his imposition of 25 percent tariffs on
imports from each of our neighbors.
Apparently
recognizing the weakness undergirding Trump's position, Mexican President Claudia
Sheinbaum made an almost certainly insincere promise to fortify the border with
10,000 soldiers, in order to stem the traffic of fentanyl. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
followed her lead, announcing that he will appoint a "fentanyl czar." Now deprived of his legal rationale for
exercising the power to levy tariffs, Trump has postponed them for 30 days, during
which time he will probably come up with an alternative national emergency.
In truth, fentanyl trafficking had been an
unconvincing reason all along. Not only
is Canada a virtual nonfactor, but Trump has been agitating for a trade war
with both countries for many years, based on his belief that they have
victimized America through unfair trade practices. The very fact that he made his desire to end an
anti-tariff agreement among the three nations a major theme of his 2016
campaign belies the argument that his recent actions have been in response to
an immediate crisis.
The Trump-friendly elements in the media have nevertheless
declared total victory. Mexico
caved! Canada caved! Trump wins yet again! During last year's campaign, Trump practically
recited an ode to tariffs in every stump speech, but we are now to conclude that
the tariffs are not what he ever really wanted.
They were just the opening bid in the negotiation, the object of which
was that Canadian fentanyl czar he had secretly wanted so badly. And if you buy that one, he's got some $Trump
cryptocurrency to sell you.
To Trump enthusiasts, any negotiation of his is a
self-fulfilling prophecy. If he demands
a bag of gold, and ends up with a fanny pack full of gravel, then that must
have been the object of the dispute all along.
Ergo, Trump is the Champion of the Universe, and his opponent is a
pitiable loser. It is impossible for
things to ever turn out any other way.
We can only pray that Trump himself is not under the
spell of this same rhetorical trickery.
The last thing we need is a globetrotting grievance-monger who goes
around instigating international conflicts, guided by his certainty that he can't
possibly be putting anything at risk.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press