President Trump’s behavior offends liberals’ deepest values. They are aghast at his having babies ripped from their mothers’ hands and sometimes even their breasts so their mothers can be hauled away to immigrant detention centers without their infants and children. Liberals were distraught by Trump’s neglect of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and they attack the Trump Administration for systematically unleashing corporate abuse of workers, consumers and those of us downwind or downstream the poisons they unload. Liberals condemn Trump’s preference for trade wars over respectful treatment of long-time allies like Canada and the E.U., with which the U.S. had fruitful trade relations. And they deeply resent his attack on the fundamental values on which American democracy was formed: his encouragement of racism, and his preference for dictators, among many others.
I think Trump is also vulnerable to a very different criticism, that his so-called strengths are empty boasts revealing a naked emperor beneath. Trump claims great negotiating skills. He told us that his real estate experience demonstrated the negotiating skills that he would use in office. But it’s an empty boast.
In office he hasn’t even been able to work with his own party. Their only significant legislation was the tax bill at the very end of the year, and his other legislative success has been getting some of the most embarrassing nominees confirmed. Otherwise he hasn’t been able to reach agreement with his own party on immigrants, and on DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. In many areas he has had to act by executive order because he can’t agree with Congress despite Republican control of both houses. But Trump says he is a great negotiator.
Just back from a meeting with Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, Trump boasts of a record breaking agreement to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula. There is however no language of agreement to parse, no details, no schedule, no promise that wasn’t made to prior American presidents, no agreement on inspection or verification. What he got instead was a photo-op. In other words, he has produced much less than President Obama got from Iran in an agreement Trump has repeatedly denounced. But Trump says he is a great negotiator.
Obama’s pivot to Asia produced the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multi-national agreement among countries ringing the Pacific: Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Canada, and United States. When President Trump pulled us out, the others continued to work together. There were objectionable pro-business provisions in the agreement but Trump made no effort to improve them. Instead, he removed the U.S. from the negotiations and the agreement, and facilitated China’s increasing dominance in the pacific region. Still, Trump says he is a great negotiator.
Mexico has not agreed to build a wall, as he promised. Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs on some imports saying they would protect American business and that there would be no trade war, but there already is. The international response to Trump’s tariff increases has been retaliation both from former allies, like Canada, Mexico and Europe, and from adversaries like China. There are no countries left to join us to bring pressure on countries causing problems. The last time this kind of tariff contest roiled international waters was in the late 1920s, giving way to the Great Depression and to World War II. But Trump says he is a great negotiator. Thank you, Mr. Trump.
Trump’s claim of negotiating skills is an empty boast intended to conceal his weakness, his unwillingness to negotiate and complete incompetence at it. His lack of skill is a scandal.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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