If you write about negotiation, then there is a strange yet tangible appreciation in observing the mind-boggling chaos a certain Donald J Trump has brought to the world. A man who claims to be a brilliant negotiator is literally giving away gems on which to base musings with a generosity he is otherwise not known for. In terms of deficits, well… I suspect Donald would be furious if he were aware of how much he is giving away for those looking for contemporary inspiration for a negotiation blog. And I haven’t even purchased one of those MAGA baseball caps in return.
At the heart of the negotiation skills training Scotwork offers are the scenarios we share with participants for them to negotiate. Our role as tutors is to observe proceedings and offer some insights and advice that should be both valuable and implementable to those participants. Of course, we never know what we’re about to witness (one of the joys of the work) and things can move at speed. That’s been useful: next week we’ll be 100 days into the second Trump administration and the bewildering pace of events makes it worth taking stock, even at such an early stage, as to what sort of advice might be hypothetically offered (I don’t for a moment imagine advice is sought, and when a tariff policy appears to have been lifted directly from a ChatGPT answer to a question about how to correct deficits, I feel grateful for that). One frame for our advice might be to turn to the remarkably robust structure that underpins negotiation across culture, sector and context. I’ll need my notes for this.
In terms of preparation, knowing what you want is of paramount importance. That sounds simple enough, yet it involves more discipline and work than might at first seem obvious. In any negotiation, the best advice would be that you are specific and precise about what you want to achieve. Taking the tariffs situation as an example, it may be that the most obvious objective appears to be abstract: to make America great again. Easy to understand? Yes. Easy to implement? Apparently, less so. It’s the kind of universal objective that means you might end up placing tariffs on an island inhabited exclusively by penguins, for example.
If you can’t be specific and precise about your objectives, one challenge that can arise is how you manage the discussion with your counterparties (in process terms, the argue step). Again using the tariffs, we have seen, broadly speaking, three distinct supporting arguments from Trump: one centres around fairness (the idea that a trade deficit is indicative of “cheating”); a second suggests that the driver is to generate revenues for the US government (even to the extent that Trump has floated the possibility that tariffs could replace income tax); and a third revolves around re-shoring US manufacturing and jobs, and driving increased demand for US produced goods. Of course, following Trump’s reversal from his initial tariff scoreboard, the White House gleefully informed the media in the briefing that the real intention had been to coerce countries around the world into begging the US for favourable trade terms. One observation would be that lots of rationale can be confusing, particularly where there are conflicting reasons being offered for a course of action. Another might be to question whether it’s in your best interests to say the quiet bit out loud: "You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here," press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a crowd of gathered reporters. "The entire world is calling the United States of America." This was reinforced by trade advisor Peter Navarro’s assertion that the tariff imposition and subsequent reversal "unfolded exactly the way it should".
As to proposal making (again, important process when it comes to negotiations) then we see a kaleidoscopic array of numbers – and that was just for starters. Could they be explained with any credibility? The subsequent chopping and changing and will-he-won’t-he speculation suggests that might be tricky. Good advice: make your proposal credible and achievable (and yes, ambitious). Best advice: both credible, and make sure it addresses the issues faced by your counterparties. It’s hard to see how the rapidly shifting proposals around tariffs emanating from the US score highly on either count – but making proposals that only suit you can be seen as adversarial. And depending on which commentators you believe, the response of the bond markets to all of this - which ultimately forced the rowback - may not have been uncoordinated. Checking on which foreign states own how much US debt suggests that this possibility is real, however (previously) improbable. Art of the deal? Well, if it’s art, my first thought is that the closest resemblance would be to a Jackson Pollock.
