Subject: Re: One Ship: $417 Million in New Tariffs
I think you are willing to cut him a little more slack than I am, because my fear to date unchanged , is that if we don't call it out in clear and brief terms , we are forever doomed to fail. His megaphone is way bigger than the opposition , and his stupidity may well damage us irreversibly ,more than even so far.

I'm not cutting him slack - he clearly has severe limitations.

He also has some significant skills in making "deals." His business success has come from being good at identifying and accessing vulnerable counterparties, success at exploiting their weak position, and making good risk-taking choices. Note: having one or more of your companies go bankrupt doesn't mean you're not good at making good risk-taking, because if you can put most of the consequences of failure on your creditors and not you personally, taking high risks that are likely to fail is often the optimum choice.

However, he doesn't have another gear. If he's not dealing with a vulnerable counterparty, he doesn't have the skills necessary to actually negotiate and get to a deal. He can't figure out the other side's goals and interests, he can't prioritize his own goals and interests, he can't identify mutually beneficial solutions - he can't add enough value to a deal to make it work for both parties, rather than just himself. It's why he failed utterly to get his agenda through Congress during his first term except the tax cuts that everyone in the GOP wanted on their own. That's why we still have Obamacare and never got Infrastructure Week passed - Trump didn't know how to cut a deal if he couldn't just set the terms and force the other side to agree. It's why he's floundering in reaching a deal in Gaza or Ukraine (though to be fair, anyone would be hard pressed to cut a deal in Ukraine, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has crushed far better negotiators than he).

He foolishly thought the US had such a strong hand in a trade dispute with our trading partners that he could do what he's good at. Now that's failed. The counterparties he needs to deal with aren't vulnerable enough to negotiate the way he knows how to negotiate; the ones that are that vulnerable (poor Lesotho!) don't matter enough to bother with. He's going to try to do what he does anyway, and just impose a deal. But if all you have is a sledgehammer, that window installation isn't going to go well.