US President Donald Trump
Credit: Reuters File Photo
Washington: President Donald Trump has long reveled in his reputation as a maximalist, issuing a huge demand, creating a crisis and setting off a high-pressure negotiation.
But increasingly often, he ends up backing down and simply declaring a win. His opponents appear to be catching on, sharpening their tactics based on Trump’s patterns and his unapologetically transactional attitude toward diplomacy.
The dynamic has played out repeatedly in recent weeks as Trump backed off, to varying degrees, on his plans to transform Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” turn Canada into the 51st state and beat China into submission with tariffs.
Now, two very different tests are emerging. One is over where Trump stands, with America’s biggest allies or with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty and safety in any ceasefire deal. The other, with Iran, may determine whether he is really willing to stand aside and let Israel bomb Iran — or join in, despite the risks — if he cannot extract a better nuclear deal than what President Barack Obama got, and cut off Iran’s pathway to a bomb.
Both those negotiations lack the numeric symmetries of tariff negotiations. Thousands if not millions of lives are potentially at stake. Both involve decades of grievance, dating back to the Iranian revolution and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
And Russia and Iran appear to be honing their strategies after watching Trump in action. Emissaries from those countries are hinting to Trump’s negotiator, Steve Witkoff, that there may be some investment opportunities for Americans if the United States eases off its demands. Witkoff, like Trump, has a history in real estate.
China proved an interesting example of Trump taking a maximalist approach only to climb down later. And in that case, too, Beijing appeared to be watching and learning Trump’s patterns.
When Trump placed tariffs on Chinese-made goods more than a month ago, he warned Beijing’s leaders, and those of other nations on the receiving end of his “reciprocal” tariffs, “Do not retaliate.” Defiance was useless. The best deals would come for those who showed up in Washington early, with a list of concessions.
President Xi Jinping of China ignored that advice. He matched the tariffs and matched again, until the figure on China’s imports to the United States hit an eye-watering 145 per cent. For five weeks, Xi followed the road toward mutually assured economic destruction. Inflation and shortages loomed. Cargo ships turned around.
It took Trump roughly 40 days to back down, agreeing to an initial 30% tariff — still punishingly high — with no consequential Chinese concessions other than an agreement to work things out over the next 90 days.
The climb-down was so striking that it set off a predictable market rally that has now stretched over two days, Trump’s ultimate measure of approval.
But it also clarified Washington’s goals. Ever since Trump began slapping tariffs on US adversaries and allies alike, central questions have loomed: Were tariffs, in the president’s mind, a mechanism to reshape the global trading order? To force a reindustrialization of America, even to produce products it makes little sense to make in America? Or is he envisioning a new source of income intended to supplement taxes to pay for a government that for 30 years has spent far more than it takes in?
At various moments, Trump has suggested all three were at play. But it now seems evident that what really excites him is using the tariffs as a cudgel, and to make his minimum 10 per cent tariff on all foreign goods look like a bargain, even if it is onerous to consumers. Everything above that number is highly negotiable.
“President Trump’s willingness to use whatever economic means necessary to bring our trading partners to the table appears to be working in the short term,” Michael B. Froman, who served as United States trade representative under Obama, said Tuesday. “A slew of negotiations are underway, and concepts of a plan have been agreed to,” he said.
“The question is to what end, and at what cost?” asked Froman, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Will his negotiating tactics cause lasting damage, including making it more difficult to get partners to work with us on other important priorities, which undermines potential economic wins?”
In the case of China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent set some narrow goals, which sounded very much like the Biden administration’s rationale for placing export controls on chips and chipmaking equipment headed for China, and to block Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, from the US market.
“We do not want a generalized decoupling from China,” Bessent said Monday on CNBC. “But what we do want is a decoupling for strategic necessities.”
He now has 90 days to work out what that looks like, and to see if China cracks down further on exporters of fentanyl, another effort that dates back to the Biden era.
While those talks drag into the summer — the 90-day period will expire in mid-August, unless it is extended — it seems likely that the critical moment will come in the negotiations with Russia and Iran.
Over the weekend, Trump reluctantly joined another big demand, this one against Russia. It was issued by Europe’s top leaders during a visit to Ukraine, after they called the US president and agreed on the language. It gave Russia until Monday to agree to a 30-day ceasefire.
Putin ignored the deadline, betting he would pay little price. Instead, he ordered drone attacks on Ukraine, and offered a negotiating session with Ukraine on Thursday in Istanbul. Trump leaped to endorse the idea, abandoning the condition that a ceasefire had to come first, so Ukraine was not negotiating while facing a Russian onslaught.
Trump had also offered Monday to show up at the talks himself as he made his way home from the Middle East. But it seems unlikely Putin will be there, reducing the allure. On Tuesday, Trump said he would send Marco Rubio, now occupying dual roles as secretary of state and national security adviser, along with Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, his Ukraine adviser.
Putin clearly senses that Trump cares little about the sanctity of Ukraine’s borders or even who is responsible for the invasion. (Soon after taking office, Trump contended that Ukraine itself was responsible, contributing to the late-February blowup with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.)
Much of the conversation in Istanbul will focus on the control of territory that Russia now occupies, and whether Ukraine has to radically reduce its armaments, and whether NATO needs to pull back both troops and arms near Russian borders. Zelenskyy has vowed to attend, adding to the potential for a standoff.
As Stephen Sestanovich, a Russia expert and longtime diplomat who wrote a book a decade ago entitled “Maximalist,” noted after a recent trip to Ukraine, ever since the Oval Office argument “the Ukrainians have found a way to combine gratitude with inflexibility and make it work for them.”
But in recent times, Putin, getting with the program, has dropped hints about joint Russian-American energy and mining operations, tempting a deal-hungry president to get something out of a Ukraine agreement, beyond his search for a Nobel Peace Prize. Witkoff sounded thrilled with that idea in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Now the Iranians are trying a similar tactic.
After several weeks of conflicting statements about whether Iran could be allowed to continue enriching uranium, which can fuel a nuclear weapon, Witkoff said last week, in an interview with Breitbart, “we believe they cannot have enrichment, they cannot have centrifuges, they cannot have anything that allows them to build a weapon.”
The demands seemed pretty clear.
But the Iranians contend that Witkoff took a far more gentle approach in the negotiating room last weekend, and did not rule out allowing some nuclear activity in Iran. Meanwhile the Iranians, according to several Iranian and other officials, have begun floating ideas for nuclear energy joint ventures, perhaps with the United States, perhaps with Saudi Arabia, their regional rival. The key is all sanctions would be lifted and Iran would preserve some of the capabilities that Witkoff, and in recent days Trump, has suggested must be mothballed or dismantled.
Tuesday in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Trump said he was offering Iran “a new path and a much better path toward a far better and more hopeful future.” Then he said: “The time is right now for them to choose."