President Donald Trump apparently had China's president on his mind at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, and he decided he needed to post about it. "I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!" he posted on Truth Social.
It's an apt example of how Trump's emotional transparency is at odds with his claim to have mastered the art of the deal.
Trump is in ongoing trade talks with China, and they're not going well. The U.S. and China are in a 90-day tariff truce, but Trump has recently alleged that China has “TOTALLY VIOLATED” the deal, and Beijing has also accused the U.S. of undermining the truce. The point of the talks is for the two largest countries in the world to find a way to de-escalate from a tariff tit-for-tat that amounted to a mutual trade embargo, which could wreak havoc on both their economies.
Trump's compulsive posting about his mood about deals could undermine his ability to actually execute them.
From my perspective, Trump ought to do what needs to be done to return trade between the two countries to a relatively normal status. But to the extent that Trump wants to extract concessions from China during the talks, it is important that he maintains a poker face. Posting in the middle of the night about how tough your rival is as you're negotiating — potentially preparing the public to accept a bad deal — is the opposite of that.
Undoubtedly China's government is observing Trump's social media and gauging his appetite for hardball or protracted negotiations. If Trump appears liable to caving pre-emptively, that could in turn make Beijing less likely to make significant concessions to him. In other words, Trump's compulsive posting about his mood about deals could undermine his ability to actually execute them.
Of course this all comes as Trump has constantly undone and re-done and then undone his redoing of tariffs around the world — a key reason that the quip TACO — "Trump always chickens out" — seems to be sticking.
Tariffs are a hugely consequential economic policy tool, and Trump has sought to use them as a way to coerce other countries to do his bidding. But imposing tariffs won't come across as a credible threat to another country if the person wielding them is emotionally volatile and fearful of what might happen if they truly follow through on their plans.