The picture shows the cover of Forbes magazine. Missiles: the new Forbes cover article publishes an exclusive interview with Trump, saying that Trump still follows the trading mentality of his time in the business world, which is at odds with today's multilateral world.
Trump is the only private-sector president in the United States, representing Republicans who have championed laissez-faire capitalism and free trade for more than a century, arguing that the government should reward and punish companies based on where they choose to locate factories and offices. Is Trump comfortable with these views?
Trump replied that he felt at home. "I want to achieve reciprocity, which is a good concept." If someone charges us a 50% tariff, we should charge them a 50% tariff. The current situation is that they charge us 50% tariff, but we take nothing. I can't do this. "
Despite years of raising his profile through "The Apprentice" Reality Show and winning the votes of thousands of voters who yearn for the same experience, Trump has not made a fortune in industry. On the contrary, Trump's strength lies in making deals-buying and selling and making deals-so that he can only make money no matter what the outcome is for others. The nuance between doing business and doing business is crucial. Entrepreneurs and businessmen create and operate entities, including shareholders, customers, employees, partners, location and other stakeholders. In theory, we all share honor and disgrace. Under Jobs and Cook, Apple Inc's investment to help early shareholders increased nearly 400-fold, turning thousands of employees who exercised options into millionaires, bringing a similar miracle to Foxconn, a Taiwanese supplier. Make customers happily queue up all night to spend hundreds of dollars on products that will become obsolete in two years.
People who make deals rarely seek to achieve such a win-win situation. Whether in stock trading or real estate transactions, a transaction tends to involve only two parties, usually resulting in an outcome in which one party is better than the other, so that "win-win" is seen as a remarkable aberration. In an interview with People in 1981, Trump said that man is the most evil animal and that life is a series of battles that win or lose. This kind of thinking still exists in Trump, who is president.
A year after the most shocking election day in decades, people of insight still admit that they continue to be shocked by Trump. They should not be surprised: Trump's worldview is incredibly consistent. Instead of seeing becoming president as an opportunity to turn his ideas into policy, Trump sees governance as a business, an endless series of deals that battle it out at the negotiating table or in the court of public opinion. His performance in his first year in office should be viewed from this perspective, which is meaningful and provides clues for his next three or even seven years in power.
Asked if Trump was happy with his new job, Trump quickly replied: "I am very happy and enjoy this job." We have made a lot of achievements and the stock market is at an all-time high. "
Unemployment is at its lowest level in nearly 17 years, and there are a lot of great economic data. "
Great economic data are not usually the way most people measure happiness. But Trump is always like this. "other people like to paint beautiful pictures or write wonderful poems, while I like to make deals and prefer to make big deals," Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal, published 30 years ago.
Numbers provide Trump with legitimacy. The number determines who wins or loses the transaction, and the industry level is established. That's why Trump has more time for hobbies than anyone on the Forbes 400 rich list.
The author told Trump in the Oval Office that the US stock market has risen 20 per cent during his tenure. Trump corrected the author's argument and extended this period to the time of his election, resulting in a bigger increase of 25%.
It certainly depends on which stock index is referenced (Trump conveniently points out the Nasdaq composite index that is best for him), but Trump does not take into account these nuances. He said that since election day, the Nasdaq has risen 25%, and its market capitalization has increased by $5.2 trillion. If Hillary Clinton is elected, the stock market will fall sharply.
Trump is equally proud of GDP during this period: "GDP grew by 3.1% last quarter, which most people say has not been achieved for a long time, and has never been achieved by the Obama administration. "
When I told him that GDP growth had reached this level several times during the Obama administration, Trump immediately said that the year-on-year growth rate was not that high, and that this quarter would have been extraordinary, if not for the hurricane.
So what about the hurricane? Trump thinks people think highly of his response to the hurricane. Whether accurate or not, big numbers always appeal to Trump. He numbered the floors of Trump Tower to make it look taller. He is obsessed with the ratings of "rise to Prosperity" and exaggerates the size of his apartment. All this explains Trump's puzzlement about the need to tweet responses immediately after the release of opinion polls that exaggerate the size of the crowd or go against it.
For Trump, numbers are also a tame tool. American companies have fully supported big data and machine learning, proposing the best course of action in these industry figures. But for decades, Trump claimed to do his own research, then buy and sell according to his intuition, and use numbers to justify his intuition. This is how he came to power, sticking to even his most unreasonable campaign promise that other politicians would give up once faced with actual political decisions. whether it's getting Mexico to pay for the border wall (though illegal immigrants are historically low) or getting the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. For example, when asked about Trump's intervention in the election, Trump pointed out that he had received 306 electoral votes and said the Democratic Party needed to make excuses for the election defeat that should have been won in theory. For the greatest salesman in American history, statistics are nothing more than marketing tools.
Trump also uses numbers as a means, a way to set his own parameters and finally declare victory. Trump, who bought the United States Football League New Jersey Army in 1984, is said to have described his bidding style to the team's co-owners: there is always an increase of $50m or $60m when he enters the arena to $75 million, when he says it is worth $125 million and bids $100m. Trump claims to have done a bad job, but others think it's great.
According to Mr Trump, this approach explains why he has cut the corporate income tax rate to the currently proposed 20 per cent, after months of saying he wanted to cut the tax rate to a lower level of 15 per cent. "in fact, I proposed 15% to achieve the goal of lowering it to 20%," Trump said.
This is a characteristic of a president that Trump has clearly admired for a long time. In the 1980s, former President Carter asked him to donate $5 million to build his own presidential library, he recalled. In the Art of Trading, Trump wrote that Carter had the guts to ask for something extraordinary, first of all, the ability to make him president.
But it is not enough to have one party to bid. According to the trading mindset, if the negotiating table is opposite a competitor rather than a partner, then creating a multi-person bidding situation will bring the best conditions. This explains why Trump suddenly praised Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, whether on raising the federal debt ceiling, abolishing the Dreamer immigration policy or on health care reform. "I think Democrats want a deal on Obamacare, and I have a deal with Republicans, so I can have the best of both worlds," Trump said. In a way, this is doing business. If I have to, I'm good at making deals with Democrats. "with regard to the negotiations on tax reform, the practice of provoking one faction against the other is also looming.
Of course, those who do not confront Trump face to face will feel the intensity of his tweets: in his tweets, he criticized House Speaker Ryan for doing nothing and asked McCornell to get back to work, calling Schumer a poor weeping wretch, Lindsay Graham a mouthpiece, Elizabeth Warren an extreme fascist, and Trump sending about 1000 tweets in the past year blaming those who dared to confront him. While these taunts seem to be personal, in fact Mr Trump is simply continuing to adopt a business strategy he has long adopted. He once again wrote in the Art of Trading, "I am the first to admit that I am very competitive, and I will do almost anything within the limits of the law in order to win." Sometimes vilifying competitors is part of a deal. "
Or denigrate your own team. In any case, Trump is the "lead dog". Authorization is not his strong suit. Look what happened after Secretary of State Tillerson apparently resumed talks with North Korea. "Tillerson was wasting his time," Mr Trump said now. But not criticizing the Secretary of State publicly actually reduces her role? Trump said he did not sabotage and thought he was actually strengthening his authority. Apart from his own authority, it is hard to see whose authority Trump is strengthening.
It is clear that Trump's circle is not exempt from idle people. Ten years ago, Trump Jr. talked to this newspaper about his father, saying that he would work with his father when he was five or six years old.
"apart from repeatedly telling me not to smoke, drink or chase girls, he always told me not to trust anyone, and then asked me if I trusted anyone. I replied that I didn't trust him. Then he asked me if I trusted him, and I replied that I did. "
"then he said don't trust, don't even trust your father! "
Many people think Trump has started a big company because of "rise to Prosperity". Actually, he didn't. The Trump Organization has 22 real estate properties. Trump charged royalties from more than a dozen entities for licensing his own brands. Overall, the Trump Organization is a valuable company, and its efficiency is more impressive than its breadth of business. Trump uses this popularity and his amazing skills as a marketer and performer to carry out a historically efficient political campaign. Trump said he spent much less money, but was elected in the end. Trump is absolutely right.
But running the Trump Organization is fundamentally different from running the US government, the ultimate organization of the United States. At the Trump Organization, Trump is basically in control. The company has no well-known board of directors, no external shareholders and a real customer base, only luxury buyers and golf club members. Running the Trump Organization is more like running a home office than Walmart Inc. When it comes to business tycoons who want to be president, compare Trump with two previous private sector leaders closest to the White House: Wendell Willkie, who lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and Wendell Willkie, who ran a huge public utility company, and Ross Perot, who fought with a Don Quixote third party in 1992. Perot's ambition is to build the careers of two large public companies, the most striking of which is electronic data systems (Electronic Data Systems). The company is in fact a global company with its own foreign policy, including the famous Iranian hostage rescue operation.
Trump does have experience leading public companies, but even then there was only one major shareholder. When Mr Trump controlled 40 per cent of the listed company Trump Hotels & Casino, he used the company to buy a personally owned casino for $500m, although one analyst thought it should be worth 20 per cent less. At one time he also owned more than 10 per cent of Resorts International. He made millions of dollars by reaching an agreement with the company at the expense of other owners. Neither ended well: Trump Hotels filed for bankruptcy in 2014, and Resorts International went bankrupt a few years earlier, when Trump had already cashed out.
Inheriting the authority of the United States government is similar to replacing General Electric Co orMicrosoft CorpThe man in charge. Newcomers are usually consistent-respect previous commitments, lead the company as well as possible, and shift to new priorities and policies.
But Trump's trading mindset doesn't think so (and so do many of his core supporters). If previous policies were bad deals, Mr Trump sees no reason to respect them, even at the expense of US reputation or perception of US policy stability.
Such as Obamacare (Obamacare). Trump says Obamacare is a complete mess. Good point. But as America's CEO, doesn't Trump have an obligation to manage until he can come up with an alternative to Obamacare? He should not threaten not to pay the insurance company, shorten the insurance period and cut the advertising budget.
"what we are doing is trying to keep health care running because it is failing," Trump said. The insurance company gave up before I took office. In any case, Obamacare is Obama's fault, not anyone else's. "
But isn't it the responsibility of the Trump administration now? "it is the government's responsibility, but I have always said that Obamacare is Obama's mistake and will never be our fault. "
The same logic is repeated in foreign policy, whether it's the Iran nuclear agreement, the Paris climate agreement or the free trade agreement. Doesn't he feel obliged to respect the agreement signed by the previous government?
Trump immediately gave a negative return.
This is a dangerous precedent for the United States: the government is not based on agreements signed by its predecessors, but repeals agreements reached, effectively weakening the authority of the President of the United States. Trump is once again indifferent to this.
"if the United States is to be good, I happen to think that NAFTA must be abolished," Trump said. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an expanded version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (TPP), and signing it would be a disaster. I am honored to have the United States withdraw from TPP, and many people agree with my decision. I like bilateral agreements. "
Mr Trump certainly likes bilateral deals. He's been doing bilateral deals all his life. But bilateral deals are just one-on-one bargaining, with uncertain prospects for negotiations that will eventually lead to a winner and a loser. Doesn't this kind of thinking run counter to our multilateral world? (lemon Nan / compilation)