For a dude that is supposed to be such a master negotiator, President Donald Trump sure doesn’t seem to be getting the deals he’s touting. Turns out that bragging about other countries personally giving you hundreds of billions of dollars to do whatever you’d like requires those other countries to go along with the boast, and that’s just not happening.
Earlier this month, Trump went on CNBC to say that the European Union had given him a $600 billion “gift” as part of trade negotiations:
They gave me $600 billion. And that’s a gift. That’s not like, you know, a loan, by the way. That’s not a loan that, oh gee, three years comes up, we have to pay it back. There’s nothing to pay back. They gave us $600 billion that we can invest in anything we want.
In trying to verify that $600 billion deal sweetener, CNN found that the grown-ups in the room did not describe the deal in those terms at all. The fact sheet issued by the European Union in late July simply said that “E.U. companies have expressed interest in investing at least $600 billion” in “various sectors in the U.S.”
Sure, sure, but that’s probably just because the EU didn’t want to admit they’d been bested by President Deals, right? Probably just downplaying how hard he absolutely owned them in this negotiation.
Yeah, no. On Thursday, the EU and the United States issued a joint statement, and the deal framework just says that “European companies are expected to invest an additional $600 billion across strategic sectors in the United States through 2028.”
Ouch. That sure doesn’t sound like the EU gave Trump or anyone else $600 billion to “invest in anything we want.” When called out on it, the administration just reverted to its usual hyperbole: “The European Union is investing $600 billion in strategic sectors that will create thousands of jobs across the United States thanks to President Trump’s negotiating skills.”
CNN also noted that this was the same thing Trump did with Japan trade talks. In the same CNBC interview, Trump said, “I got a signing bonus from Japan of $550 billion; that’s our money. It’s our money to invest as we like.” Japan’s tariff negotiator had to be the grown-up in the room here: “It’s not that $550 billion in cash will be sent to the US.”
The problem here isn’t just that Trump is a deeply stupid man in way over his head about the economy, though that is definitely a problem. The additional problem is that since Trump only knows how to bully and grift, he can only see trade negotiations through the lens of how many hundreds of billions are offered to him as tribute, as a signifier of submission and fealty. He’s never going to stop insisting his trade negotiations included billions of dollars in sweeteners because he’s just so good at deals.
This would all be so much easier if Europe and Japan could be like Qatar and just give him a plane, huh? Then he might shut up with these fantasies of how countries would turn over huge chunks of their economy to the whims of a guy who bankrupted casinos.
Trump’s masterful negotiation skills are not ushering in some brave new world of domestic manufacturing and job growth. Indeed, experts have said Trump’s trade war is instead making it far more likely that manufacturing employment decreases. And of course we know that the whole job growth thing isn’t looking so hot right now, so the only play Trump has is to cook the books to hide the damage.
The problem for Trump is that while he can trash the information environment stateside, he can’t control other countries, which keep having a nasty habit of not going along with his ridiculous lies. How dare they.