What real trade negotiations look like (hint: not Trump's)

Politico:

Trump announced the framework for a trade deal with the U.K., the first agreement the White House has reached since launching steep new global tariffs last month.

“The final details are being written in the coming weeks,” Trump said during an event in the Oval Office, adding that the deal would provide new market access in the U.K. for American agriculture, chemicals, machinery and many other industrial products....

The broad framework will likely set the tone for deals with countries in the coming weeks, as Trump eyes countries in Asia economically close to China, such as India, South Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks.

Don't be fooled by talk of a "framework," as if a final deal is imminent. Writing for Foreign Policy — "What's Actually on the Table in Trump's Promised Trade Deals?" — negotiations and trade policy expert Dmitry Grozoubinski details what's involved in legitimate deals, and to what extent the U.S. will benefit from them. A key passage: "When you hear a US official say that they’ve 'reached a deal on a framework' ... what this mostly means is that the United States has agreed with a partner about all the things it definitely won’t ask it for."

What follows are selections from Grozoubinski's article:

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The speed at which the United States can do deals and how many it can get done before its (self-imposed) 90-day deadline—July 9—depends on how little the Trump administration is willing to accept from trading partners.... If it wants countries to change their tax regimes, reform their entire tariff structures, permanently divest from China, and make laughing at the Tesla Cybertruck a felony, then even 900 days would be insufficient....

[Trump's] decision-making process is a black box. Unspecified representatives from an unspecified list of countries engaging with unspecified administration officials in Washington, D.C., to make unspecified offers against unspecified demands in the hopes of winning unspecified concessions—concessions that a U.S. administration that treats compliance with its own treaties and commitments as largely optional might or might not implement to an unspecified degree for an unspecified period of time.

All that ambiguity and mystery causes every passing comment by anyone who might have an insider’s view to be magnified and dissected, as if those such as the Commerce Secretary are ancient gurus sharing wisdom through cryptic aphorisms and not—as may well be the case—learning about half of this stuff in real time on Truth Social along with the rest of us.

In trying to understand what’s coming out of the White House, it’s useful to know what “normal” looks like in trade negotiations—and how long that can take.... The first step is often determining what each side isn’t talking about. A very important initial phase of any negotiation is a meta-discussion of the type of issues that each side is comfortable with being up for discussion. We can generally assume that tariffs will be—but what about intellectual property? Government procurement? Immigration? Investment controls? Women’s economic empowerment? Environmental regulations?

This stage is especially important with a president who seems to have trouble distinguishing between national interests and his own. Nobody wants to be blindsided with a demand to invest in Trump’s cryptocurrency venture....

It’s very common for the technical negotiations to make progress even as the big-ticket issues remain completely immovable. If you were negotiating your employment contract line by line, then you could probably pretty quickly agree on language for 90 percent of it, even if you and your potential employer were still miles apart on agreeing to a salary and paid family leave. Ultimately, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

This creates a confusing dynamic in how secretly conducted negotiations are communicated. It is semantically correct to say that negotiations are “making progress” when the technical work is moving ahead nicely but the big issues are hopelessly stalled. It could also be (very narrowly, dubiously, and misleadingly) semantically correct to describe the smaller compromises reached at the technical level as “deals made.” Yet neither term is necessarily informative.

In a trade negotiation, especially an ad hoc and highly politicized one such as those currently being conducted by the Trump administration, the outstanding question is not whether the technical work can be completed, but whether leaders can find a landing zone on the major issues.

Until we start seeing indications of actual progress being made on major issues—and indeed, until we start seeing signed texts—grand pronouncements of progress are probably meaningless. The Trump administration is trying to hold the rest of the world hostage, but it keeps unloading the gun, waving it erratically, and refusing to specify how much it wants in ransom. Braggadocio about the inevitability of triumph should be treated accordingly (italics mine).