“The president masters the art of contracts. He is a negotiator,” White House press chief Karoline Leavitt told Fox News last month, referring to Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine and Russia to agree to a ceasefire.
Leavitt was nodding to Trump’s 1987 business bestseller, Trump: The Art of Contract. The book runs through a series of property transactions that Trump, a young developer at the time, was working on, explaining his trading approach in the late 1980s.
As President of the United States, Trump is currently changing his stance by exercising tariffs, foreign policy, executive orders, and regulations on shock trade partners, government agencies and businesses. But do deal makers, diplomats and officials believe that the negotiation tactics he asserted helped him to succeed in business?
The art of this contract was an unreliable memoir ghost-written by Tony Schwartz, who publicly declared his deep regret in 2016 about his role in boosting Trump’s reputation. “I put the lipstick on the pig,” he told New Yorker. He also described “a deep sense of regret that I contributed to presenting Trump, that he brought wider attention and that he became more attractive than him.” (Trump’s Liposte: “He wasn’t writing a book. I did.”)
Yet, trade experts recognize some of the particles of truth in the tactics described in the book, even those who oppose Trump’s policies, and practice Trump in his first and second terms as president. They also highlight the many pitfalls of his dominant approach.
You will receive an explanation of Trump’s “simple and easy” deal-making style. “I aim very high, and I push and hold on to get what I want.
The president’s declaration that the US should own Greenland, regain control of the Panama Canal, and fit Canada into this template as the 51st US province. “He comes up with these outrageous anchors people are talking about within 24 hours,” says Bob Bordne, who founded the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program, which runs negotiation and conflict management courses at Harvard Law School. This technique unsettles counterparties and shifts and speaks towards extreme outcomes.
Ben Smith, director of consulting firm Carney and US government adviser when George W. Bush was president, praises Trump’s desire for “a daring deals.” One important lesson from the art of trading is to “do big things if you spend all your time doing business.” “Efforts to make a $100 million acquisition are actually equivalent to an $10 million acquisition.”
Dealmakers are unanimous about the importance of sustainability. According to Colado Passera, a veteran Italian bank executive who served as pastor from 2011 to 2013, this is “one of the keywords not only in transactions, but in the management and operation of the company and country.”
But Passera has a “sometimes” “push, push, push” is the right way to reach the results, but there’s a more balance.
John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser in his first term, has now been a voice critic.
“Some individuals cultivate conflict like abuse ram,” warns neurologist Joel Salinas, co-author with Bowdon, Dispute Resilience, on how to deal with disagreements. This approach was evident in the dressing down of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. Such an attitude “eliminates the room from multiple perspectives,” says Salinas, leading to inferior outcomes.
“This right approach – Trump’s approach – “If they hate me, who cares, and what’s important is that they fear me” – may be productive in the short term,” Passella says, but not in the long term. He hints at Trump’s frequent claims that he has more “cards” than his negotiating partners, saying his offensive style “gets hands, but not necessarily a game.”
Smith speculates that Trump’s fear-based negotiation stance reflects his experiences in real estate. Properties are not “multi-inning games,” unlike the tech industry, where companies, for example, have to work with rivals before working with them.
This approach is further unapplicable in geopolitics. “We’re just trying to rely on power. It’s bullying,” says Kath Bishop, a former British diplomat and leadership coach. Bolton said Trump “has no philosophy, he has no grand strategy at least in international security. Everything is transactions, episodes, ad hoc, and through the prism, “Is this profitable for me?”
Trump’s self-promotion tendencies were already evident in the art of dealings, describing the use of “the form of truth exaggeration and a very effective form of promotion.”
Former Goldman Sachs deals with banker Marco Alveravels, who is now CEO of Green Hydrogen Company TES, and sees the hype as another way to project another confidence that can play “a big role in deal-making.”
In his 1987 book, Trump explains that he was not involved in one difficult Manhattan property transaction. Alverà is a powerful advocate who has led the way for the time, using his personal capital to drive pipeline contracts when he was CEO of gas company SNAM. “Make sure people care,” he says.
But Bordone says the danger is that heavyweight principals, especially the president, can get into the muscles and disrupt sensitive negotiations. “Leaders can be very good (trade) closers, but if they don’t, they should show up for signing,” he says.
Perhaps the most obvious art of trading since Trump took office is to “sometimes pay to be a little wild.”
In the book, Trump writes about how he applied the principles when he threatened to “sue a lawsuit for murder” against a bank employee trying to seize a farmer’s widow. But it also fits the unpredictability that drives the US President’s market regarding the scope and size of tariffs. Bill Reid, CEO of US commodity trading company CCI, said recently that the fog of policy has led to a possible “waiting” approach to investment.
However, traders acknowledge that unpredictability is a legitimate tactic when used sparingly.
Passera recalls meeting union representatives in 1998 when he took over as Italian postmaster. They created a list of people he should appoint to a key role. To their shock and the shock of his fellow executives he wiped it out into the bin. Strikes and strikes followed, but Passera says that the signal he wanted to change the rules ultimately led to a win over the union, leading to more long-term mutual respect. Meanwhile, he says, “If unpredictability becomes unreliable, you lose the trust and respect of your counterpart.”
“Wild is not good because it creates fear,” adds Bishop. However, creative negotiation tactics can open up new routes to the desired transaction outcome. “I like how Trump questioned things people have never asked before. I don’t like his answers to those questions.”
