Flim Flam 101

President Trump’s threat of tariffs on Mexican imports to the US was never credible, as it would have devastated the US auto industry and American agriculture. It was a transparent bluff intended to raise the President’s personal visibility, as Senate minority leader Schumer said. Trump got nothing new in the one-page joint statement that resolved the “crisis.” The Mexicans had agreed months ago to the main provisions of the agreement he greeted as a “great deal.”

This is now a boringly familiar pattern. It was what Trump did with Canada and Mexico in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, which produced a “United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement” (USMCA). Aside from being the worst acronym in the lexicon, USMCA is no more than NAFTA 2.0, a much-needed update of a decades-old agreement. No big triumph, and the Administration is having a hard time getting it approved in Congress.

Bluff is also what Trump with North Korea when he threatened military action and settled instead for a one-page “best efforts” pledge that fell short of previous Pyongyang commitments to denuclearize. There has been no significant progress since, despite a second failed summit in Hanoi, as Kim Jong-un has moved to shore up relations with Russia and China, neither of which has much reason to do favors for Trump. North Korea remains as much, if not more, of a threat to the US as in did in January 2017 at Trump’s inauguration.

The pattern was similar in soon forgotten Venezuela. Trump’s threats against President Maduro caused a temporary “crisis” but led nowhere. Maduro is still in power in Caracas while the American-backed interim president has failed to gain significant support in Venezuela’s armed forces. With no possibility of even a vague one-page statement in sight, Trump has moved on to other targets.

Iran is getting the typical Trump treatment. While deploying military assets to the Gulf and allowing National Security Adviser Bolton to talk tough, President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo have been begging for talks with Tehran. Pompeo has dropped his 12 preconditions. The President had never endorsed them. What the Administration wants now seems to be nothing more than an opportunity to sit at a table and berate Iran for building missiles and using proxies to project power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Any statement from such “talks” would be no more substantive than Trump got out of Mexico.

The Iranians are no fools and could teach a Flim Flam 101 of their own. All their threats to close the Strait of Hormuz fall in this category, as their own ships pass there, as well as those of other nations delivering Iranian oil. The Iranians no doubt know that the Trump Administration is incapable of negotiating anything like the 159 pages of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka Iran nuclear deal. If ever they agree to talk about missiles and the use of proxies, Tehran will no doubt ask for reciprocity: removal of US weapons from the Gulf and an end to US military support to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

Tehran knows those will be non-starters for the US. The only likely outcome of talks with the US would be an exchange of prisoners: Iranians held on criminal charges in the US for Americans (including Iranian Americans) held in Iran. Trump may decide that would be worth his while, as it would give him a much-needed boost on the international stage, where he is more pariah than hero. But I have my doubts he’ll be willing to pay the price for even that small gain: the Iranians will want relief from at least some of the sanctions that are tanking their economy.

Trump is a bad negotiator who follows a transparent pattern: threaten, cause crisis, settle for little, declare victory, take personal credit. It isn’t working. He has been unable to negotiate a single agreement worthy of presidential attention, and his threats are making other countries hedge their bets. The bullying with sanctions and tariffs is gaining nothing. It is instead undermining international confidence in the US and making other countries look elsewhere for leadership. Would you do business with a flim flam man who bullies?