Trump needs to negotiate like a boss
Donald Trump the dealmaker heads into the autumn of his first year in as weak a negotiating position as any president in modern times — desperate for a victory yet hardly near consensus on any major priority, still able to dominate the national conversation but so far incapable of translating that into action.
A summer of tumult marked by staff shake-ups, legislative failures, intraparty feuds, a racially inflammatory controversy and a nuclear-edged war of words has left him at odds with his own Republican Party and supported by barely a third of the American public. The list of daunting challenges has only grown with little sense of how he plans to tackle them beyond Twitter storms and declarations of determination.
As Congress returns to town Tuesday, the president faces weeks of hard negotiations to overhaul the tax code, raise the debt ceiling, keep the government open, finance his border wall, and secure relief and reconstruction money for areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey. On top of that, he plans to throw another polarizing issue on the docket by scrapping President Barack Obama’s program allowing younger unauthorized immigrants to stay in the country unless Congress acts to save it within six months.
“Legislatively, September may be the longest month of the year, with several must pass items that face an uphill climb,” said Doug Heye, a longtime Republican strategist. The president’s decision to push the immigrant program to Congress “only makes that harder, on an issue that for years Republicans have struggled to make any headway on. The question is whether this was a strategic decision by the White House.”
His vaunted deal-making skills could also be put to the test in foreign policy as he decides how to respond to North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling while separately seeking to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And he may alienate America’s traditional European allies if he tries to scuttle Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran by declaring Tehran out of compliance over their objections.
Rather than making friends to accomplish these goals, Trump has alienated some of the very allies a president would normally rely on. As he pressures North Korea to curb its nuclear program, he has belittled South Korea for “appeasement” and threatened to tear up its trade deal with the United States. As he lobbies lawmakers to back his legislative priorities, he has castigated Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and other Republicans.
While his approval ratings remain mired around 35 percent, Trump’s allies argue that he had a better summer than the Washington conventional wisdom would suggest and that he has a path forward. They contend that after the fights of early August, the president took on the mantle of a national leader with a vigorous and visible response to Hurricane Harvey, and that cleaning up the devastation may prove both a rallying point and a strategic leverage.
“It may sound counterintuitive, but the president heads into September with a bit of wind at his back,” said Michael Dubke, who served as his White House communications director. “Harvey was handled well, tax reform is back on track, the debt ceiling showdown will be pushed to a later date and while there are no good choices in North Korea, the president’s national security team is second to none.”
Republicans are talking about tying hurricane relief money to the debt ceiling increase, sweetening a vote that conservatives typically resist with action that they presumably would find more appealing. If that gets the issue off the table, the president’s allies said, it could make it possible for him to focus on the tax code. It may still be difficult for Trump to win as much money for his border wall as he wants, but partial financing could be seen as a victory.
The president’s decision to cancel Obama’s program for young illegal immigrants, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, will open the fall on a divisive note. But his advisers hope that delaying the effect by six months will force Congress to put the program on a firm constitutional foundation.
While Republicans feel burned by Trump’s attacks on McConnell and others, some said they have little choice but to find a way to come together.
“We have to work with the president,” Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said on Meet the Press on NBC last weekend. “I think it’s a mistake to get in a fight with the president. It’s not a mistake to disagree when you disagree; it is a mistake to suggest that somehow this president, who was elected just as the Constitution prescribed, and has the responsibility to lead the country, that somehow we need to not work with this president.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Trump will host a group that has been dubbed the Big Six to discuss his tax overhaul — McConnell; House Speaker Paul Ryan; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; Gary Cohn, the president’s national economics adviser; and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the Republican chairmen of the taxwriting committees. On Wednesday, Trump will host another White House meeting with McConnell, Ryan and their Democratic counterparts, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.
Trump has long boasted of his art-of-the-deal negotiating skills and part of his appeal in last year’s election was the hope that he could use them to finally break through a paralyzed capital. “Deals are my art form,” he once said on Twitter. “Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals.”