Trump and the Art of Presidential Deal Making

Abstract

Donald Trump’s professional background is unique among presidents. I glean basic principles of negotiation from his professional life, presented largely in his book The Art of the Deal, but also other writing, media interviews, and social media posts. I argue the success of his approach is dependent for the most part upon three factors: the nature of his counterpart, the expected frequency of future deals with this counterpart, and the position of the status quo and reversion points in the negotiation. In the bargaining contexts I present, Trump’s approach, I hypothesize, is most likely to bring about success—a deal—in foreign policy and least likely in regular lawmaking. I find some evidence consistent with this. The study illustrates scholars should do more to understand how pre-tenure careers affect presidential behavior.