President Trump came into office promising to strike “big, beautiful” deals.
He quickly opened a dizzying number of negotiations to, naming just a few of his aims, end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, bring peace to the Middle East and usher in dozens of trade deals in record time.
“Everybody wants to come and make a deal,” the president said this month.
But so far, the goals of many of Mr. Trump’s negotiations have been unrealized, even those that he said would be accomplished in days or weeks. The war in Ukraine is still raging, and the president has floated the idea of abandoning peace talks altogether. Hamas is still holding hostages in Gaza despite Mr. Trump’s warning on social media that the terrorist group must release them all or “you are DEAD!” And while Mr. Trump insists that countries are racing to strike trade deals with the United States, the details are scant.
“You undermine your negotiating position when you pick fights with literally everybody — big, small, friend, foe, economy, national security — at the same time,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, an international consulting firm. “On balance, he’s going to have a much harder time because he’s trying to do all this stuff at the same time.”
For years, Mr. Trump has cultivated an image as a master negotiator, using his past as a real estate developer and reality television star to form the core of his political identity. And while making deals on enormously complex issues takes both time and care, Mr. Trump’s inability — so far, at least — to deliver in the ways that he promised has exposed the gulf between his rhetoric and his accomplishments.
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For Mr. Trump’s aides and allies, their confidence in the president remains undiminished — and whenever his approach is questioned, they are aligned in their response. The president, they remind detractors, wrote the 1987 book “The Art of the Deal.”
“No matter the task, President Trump will always get the best deal for the American people,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “In less than 100 days, President Trump has leveled the playing field for our manufacturers, brought us closer to peace in Gaza and Ukraine, flooded the US with historic investment commitments, returned American hostages, and held universities accountable for fostering antisemitism. There is no negotiation too daunting for President Trump and he continues to prove his critics wrong.”
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