"This gets back to my 'three levels of corruption' idea, which I would summarise this way: Level 1 is 'Slip us come cash and we’ll do something extra for you.' Level 2 is 'Slip us some cash and we’ll actually do our job for once.' And Level 3 is 'Slip us some cash and nobody gets hurt.'"The biopharma executives who are flying in for personal audiences with Trump or staying quiet while muttering about needed to keep up good relations are hoping for some Level 1 action, bracing for a lot of Level 2, and are terrified at the thought of Level 3.
"They should be. Level 3 corruption is where government short-circuits into becoming a protection racket. And that, I should add, is one of the only ways in which our current president is capable of seeing the world and all the transactions in it. He’s a real estate developer from Queens who came up as a protegé of Roy Cohn - of course he does. His approach to dealing with Congress, to international relations, to trade, to most any issue at all is that of a mob boss: who’s shaking down whom, who gets the payoffs, who owes the favours, who takes a cut (... this stuff has been glaringly evident for many years).
"But that worldview is not (thank God) the ironclad rule of all human existence."~ Derek Lowe from his post 'Stand Up And Be Counted' [hat tip Duncan B.]
RELATED (from 2018):
“I'M GOING TO GET a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don’t know, I’m an adjunct professor at Indiana University – Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
"Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of 'The Art of the Deal,' a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you’ve read 'The Art of the Deal,' or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know, even if you didn’t know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call 'distributive bargaining.'
"Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.
"The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining."In integrative bargaining the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.
"THE PROBLEM WITH TRUMP is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
"One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.
"There isn’t another Canada.
"So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
"Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours."Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM – HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.
"TRUMP HAS THE SAME WEAKNESS politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works, not over the long run.
"For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.
"Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
"From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether it's better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”— David Honig, from his (now widely distributed) 2018 Facebook post
7 comments:
This seems an elaborate way of saying that Trump sees trade as the seller getting one over on the buyer, rather than a mutually beneficial, win-win exchange. Hence he think’s he’s ‘won’ by making non-American products harder to buy.
I'm enjoying these academic "experts" and TDS stricken commentators making up their long winded edumuckated rationalisations about what is going on. Perhaps they'll be like Peter Schiff and get something right once or even twice. It ought to be remembered that even a stopped analogue clock gets the time right twice a day. The rest of the day....not so good. My contention is that these commentators do not really know what is going on. They are outsiders. They apply theories and principles well enough but they are not aware of the context much of the time and are certainly missing some key information.
Here is a hint. UK and Europe are not natural allies of the USA. They never were. The USA is in existential trouble. It is war they have been subject to. BAU is not an option for them.
Do any of Trump fanboys who regularly comment on this blog want to have a go at defending Trump throwing Ukraine under a bus?
@MarkT: Since your question has now stood there unanswered for nearly 24 hours (well, 19 or so anyway), it seems the answer is "No."
They're probably too busy pinning up pictures of Putin on their bedroom walls.
@ PC - Indeed.
I've actually been hoping I was wrong about Trump. That perhaps behind all that bluster, there was perhaps something good in him, and a plan I wasn't seeing that the fanboys were. But I think we've now reached the point where even their ability to sustain disbelief must be being tested.
The situation is being painted as very black and white - Trump can do no right and is literally Hitler; Zelensky can do no wrong and deserves sainthood status; if you question endless war, you're a Putin fanboy. I don't think it can be that simple.
@Richard: Let's avoid the passive verb: "painted" by whom? Whom are you accusing? 'Cos even the ingredients of your accusation aren't there in Mr Honig's piece.
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