He negotiates in bad faith. No deal is final. He will change the terms to meet his whims.

The Chinese understand. Notice how there are no soybean purchases from China this year. They do not trust the US on important things like food.

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3eb7988a1663 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I assumed the soybean thing was more about sending a message. Soybeans are the number one US export crop. Shutting down the market is a big financial blow, makes the trade deficit worse, and angers farmers who otherwise would have happily sold to the Chinese.

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JumpCrisscross 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> He negotiates in bad faith

Plenty of great negotitors across history did, too. Trump gets played. Repeatedly. Predictably. His political instincts have been sharp enough that I'm increasingly chalking this up to age, but maybe he just had a better team around him the first time around.

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Prickle 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

He singlehandedly annihilated the US soybean market.

That's not a good thing. Lots of farmers going bankrupt now.

	▲	jrs235 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But his crony buddies stand to benefit from farmers going to bankrupt. Makes it difficult to understand if this is incompetence or intentional malice at play...
	▲	ZeroGravitas 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> He singlehandedly annihilated the US soybean market. Again... He's done this twice now.

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dboreham 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No. It's explicitly self-destructive. He gets off on setting things on fire, including himself.

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defrost 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> increasingly chalking this up to age

I've always had high regard for Trump as a talented scumbag grifter of note.

He's been noticeably and increasingly off game since it seemed he was only campaigning for re-election to avoid a mountain of looming bad legal outcomes.

Much of his early second term "wins" I've marked as momentum success from having a ready to go game plan care of the Project 2025 crowd. His carry through on tariffs, dodging Epstein complications, handling free speech issues, etc. have been more chaotic than cunning.