The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president,by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.

Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece...

“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.

Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining."

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn't another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

— David Honig

In news related to nothing in particular:

I was planning to see Lauren Mayberry perform at The Fillmore in San Francisco last Wednesday, January 29th, 2025.

I tried to buy a ticket the week before, but The Fillmore's box office was closed (maybe because I checked the time of a show and the box office being open from a device with UTC time instead of Pacific and their stupid website calendar gave me incorrect information? I dunno.).

I showed up, the night of the show: there was a note on the box office as well as a trash can that the show was cancelled because Lauren Mayberry wasn't feeling good or something. ;(

I've seen her perform live before, albeit with CHRVCHES at The Fox Theater in Oakland years ago. I didn't even realize that she had gone onto a solo career, and am kicking myself for missing her the last/first time she performed as a soloist in San Francisco in 2023 at a much smaller (and also not owned by TicketMaster/LiveNation) venue.

I guess her San Francisco show has been rescheduled to May 23rd, 2025?

Supposedly tickets will be honored for that night (as if I was able to get one in the first place, which I wasn't)?

There's a news article claiming that this was her first solo tour, but clearly, it wasn't. Especially sketchy when said news article's audio/podcast is a friggin text to speech voice. The bar for churning out BS content online is so low these days apparently.

I wasn't the only person who showed up on the 29th, upset that the show had been canceled. Some woman I spoke with drove all the way from Antioch and paid a bridge toll to be there and apparently according to the LiveNation/Ticketmaster website (The Fillmore, no longer has a website of its own, though it used to until more recently I guess) was claiming the show was still on at 6:00pm local time the day of the show.

There wasn't a single person from The Fillmore's staff on site as far as I could see.

Though, there was a huge blue tour bus with its engine running and all the shades pulled down, which I am guessing was Lauren Mayberry's or maybe CVLT OF VENVS's?

At one point, some old long gray haired bearded bespectacled dude who looked like a text book definition of a roadie seemed as if he was going to enter the tour bus, but then when seeing me and others looking at him, stepped back and walked away, which was weird a.f. tbh.

I drove quite a ways (twice) only to be let down by The Fillmore. I can't overstate how much I fucking hate LiveNation/TicketMaster and the hegemonic stranglehold they have.

The cynic in me wonders: maybe they're screwing with Lauren Mayberry? They intentionally made it difficult to sell tickets and did a shit job of promoting her show and now bumped her back by months just to drain her tour budget (that tour bus did not look cheap, at all)?

That sketchy a.f. roadie turning tail too, just gave me the heebie-jeebies too, like there's some sordid side story that I don't want to know about, but if I ever learned the details would probably horrify me.

Anyway, here's hoping I can find their box office open again in person, eventually. The last show I saw there was Skinny Puppy and while it's far from my favorite venue in the SF Bay Area, there are worse places I guess.

I still wish I had seen her during that 2023 tour though, no LiveNation/Ticketmaster, smaller venue, her actual first tour as a soloist. I am pretty sure I subscribed to her on social media (whatever counts for that in this day and age of surveillance capitalistic garbage) and never caught wind of that tour though, so I am guessing it was also very sparsely attended?

There weren't a lot of people who showed up only to be disappointed either, so I guess either there weren't many advanced ticket sales, or somehow people got word that was apparently not convey to poor schleps like me and that woman who drove out from Antioch.