Day 924: Trump’s lack of negotiating skills exposed again

China is playing chess while Trump is playing tic-tac-toe.

While campaigning, one of Donald Trump’s biggest bona fides — according to him and some talking heads — were his negotiation skills. His Twitter account is full of tweets boasting about his prowess and providing various tips to his followers.

Two-and-a-half years in to his term and those “skills” have proven to be a total sham. He ripped up the Iran Deal and has been desperate to replace it with something, only to see Tehran stonewall him as they rebuild their nuclear program. He alleged some sort of pact with North Korea, but Pyongyang keeps developing and testing weapons. He withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, and the rest of the world refused to budge in renegotiating it.

Trump has also been taken to the cleaners badly by China in trade war that he started. So he’s desperately trying to spin the story, even as he’s bailing out wealthy farmers and bankrupting smaller ones as a result of the tariffs.

In other words, there’s no deal with China, as Beijing looks elsewhere for goods ordinarily imported from the U.S. So after seeing what hasn’t been working, Trump decided to double down on tariffs, and slap them on all goods coming in from China.

Americans will continue to suffer in two primary ways. First, farmers and manufacturers will have to absorb losses due to reciprocal tariffs being slapped on their products by China. Exports are likely to continue falling, with no chance for the income to be made up. Additionally, American consumers will be paying the cost of the tariffs because imported goods from China will be sold at a higher cost to make up for those tariffs.

Trump’s negotiating skills are causing severe fluctuations in the stock market too, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 600 points in the last two days.

924 days in, 538 to go

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