Britain | Business strategy

The Donald assesses the Brexit deal. Sad!

Applying the wisdom of “The Art of the Deal” to Britain’s forthcoming negotiations with the EU

IF YOU only have a choice of root vegetables, you’ll probably end up with some turnips. Theresa May, Britain’s new prime minister, had no choice but to appoint Brexiteers to her new cabinet. From the crop available, she has put Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis into the roles that will define the country’s post-Brexit relationship with the world. Each faces an appallingly tough task. As foreign secretary, Mr Johnson must avoid putting his foot in it. Mr Fox must draw up new trade deals for Britain without obvious help from Adam Werritty. And Mr Davis must steer Britain safely out of the European Union, trying to retain as much access to the single market as possible while winning meaningful concessions on freedom of movement.

This last task would tax any negotiator, let alone Mr Davis, who until recently appeared to think that EU members were free to seal separate trade deals with Britain, and that the whole thing would be done and dusted by the end of 2018. Walter Mitty would have a better grasp of the challenges ahead. Fortunately, there is someone Mr Davis can turn to for advice—a man who is a self-acknowledged master of deal-making and who thinks Brexit is a good idea.

So what would Donald Trump do if he were in Mr Davis’s shoes? We need not guess. “The Art of the Deal” was “written by” Mr Trump in 1987 and concentrates on real estate. But for any aspiring negotiator, its truths echo through the decades. Indeed, someone in the Leave campaign clearly thumbed its pages before the June referendum took place. In his book Mr Trump entreats people to think big: a gigantic national experiment surely fits the bill. He confesses he likes to go with his gut, not follow a bunch of number-crunchers: Michael Gove’s warnings against listening to experts would have him nodding. And this is the tycoon, years away from his own presidential campaign, on the useful elasticity of truth:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies…That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Mr Davis and others innocently exaggerated their way through the Brexit campaign to great effect. But they will find less to encourage them as they look through “The Art of the Deal” in search of wisdom on how to deliver on their promises.

Mr Trump thinks it important to keep your options open, since lots of deals never come off. “I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.” Making an irreversible commitment to leave the EU may not have been the best way for Britain to start off, in other words.

Once the talking starts, the Donald counsels that the one thing negotiators have to have is leverage. “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.” When marketing apartments in Trump Tower in New York, Mr Trump was in no rush to sign contracts. “The more unattainable the apartments seemed, the more people wanted them.” If only Mr Davis could tell the EU to get to the back of the queue.

Make sure you have something that the other side cannot do without, continues Mr Trump, who might therefore be disappointed to learn that 45% of British exports go to other EU countries, whereas only around 7% of their total exports come to Britain. Even if you don’t have leverage, says the mogul, you can still pretend you do. Nigel Farage tried this approach in the European Parliament after the June 23rd vote, telling MEPs that Europe needs Britain more than Britain needs it. The place dissolved in laughter.

Mr Trump is also clear that you don’t want to negotiate with lots of different people. He complains in the book about making deals with the Japanese: “They come to see you in groups of six or eight or even twelve, and so you’ve got to convince all of them to make any given deal.” Again, not great news for Mr Davis, who has to win round 27 countries and the European Parliament to boot. Some of them might be flexible: it is true that German carmakers value access to the British market, as Brexiteers never tire of saying. But other EU countries run bilateral trade deficits with Britain, and are less interested in cutting generous deals.

Worst of all for Mr Davis, there is this passage from “The Art of the Deal”. “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.” Promises win campaigns and sink governments. The Donald may well have forgotten his own advice, but he was not wrong.

So there you have the Trump commandments. Make sure you have other options and lots of leverage. Negotiate with a small group of people. And make sure you can deliver on your promises. Britain, it’s all going to be so great.

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