Saturday, June 16, 2018

Negotiating tactics

After five hundred plus days, I have just realized how Trump negotiates. Take North Korea. First he escalates the situation so that the likelihood of a terrible outcome for his opponent is higher than it would otherwise have been; then he offers a deal to take things back to where they were before he inflamed the situation. A second example is immigration. He implements a new draconian policy (separating children from their parents) so that he has something to give up in negotiation.

It's an interesting tactic - make things worse so that in a subsequent negotiated settlement, you can give something up that simply returns you to your original pre-escalation position; you have conceded nothing and (hopefully) gotten something else in return. Essentially it is hostage taking. I'll deprive you of something you value and the sell it back to you.

What is as yet unclear is whether it works - it clearly has not yet in the North Korea de-neuclearization. Whether it will get him what he wants in the immigration debate is less clear - I suspect this one he will win simply because the Democrats can't afford, morally or electorally, to turn their backs on the situation Trump has created. 

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