‘Art of the Deal’ and new challenges

In his bestselling 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” Donald Trump highlights a series of tactics to try to win big in business negotiations. Fast forward almost four decades, and the now US president is increasingly seeking to translate this approach to the global political and economic landscape.
In the tariff arena, for instance, Trump regularly seeks to demonstrate key themes of his book. These include using leverage to find and exploit pressure points, plus being unpredictable to keep counterparts, even if they are longstanding US allies, guessing to try to gain the upper hand.
A good example of Trump’s philosophy translated into practice came last week when the US administration, amid much current geopolitical and geoeconomic turmoil across the world, announced major new trade investigations which are likely to lead to new US tariffs from this summer. This new front of uncertainty is clearly designed, in part, to test the mettle of nations who are targeted.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the so-called Section 301 unfair trade practice investigations under the 1974 Trade Act will start immediately. Perhaps the most high-profile of these probes is being undertaken, according to Greer, because “the United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us.”
He said that this investigation “will focus on economies that we have evidence appear to exhibit structural excess capacity and production in various manufacturing sectors, such as through larger persistent trade surpluses, or underutilized or unused capacity.”
The list of targets includes the 27 EU member states, Norway, and Switzerland in Europe. Plus Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Japan, and India. In North America, Mexico is also on the list.
Stakeholder comments on the excess-capacity probe are allowed till the middle of April, and a public hearing will be held in early May. The administration’s goal is to get the investigations completed before July 23. This is the date when the Section 122 tariffs of 10 percent which are underpinned by the US 1972 Trade Act, imposed last month by Trump are set to expire after 150 days.
Any extension of these Section 122 measures would require approval by the US Congress. However, many legislators will not want to approve this during a midterm election year, given the unpopularity with voters so close to November’s ballots.
Section 301 allows the president to impose import taxes on goods without the approval of Congress. Trump could impose such tariffs if the investigations find any countries using unfair trade practices. The tariffs could last as long as any countries continue the practices deemed discriminatory to the US.
These aggressive moves by the Trump administration are the latest chapter in its response to the US Supreme Court ruling last month which struck down Trump’s reciprocal and fentanyl drug tariffs whose legal underpinning was the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The separate, sectoral US tariffs announced last year on industries such as steel and aluminum are not impacted by the ruling and remain fully in place. 

Trump could impose new tariffs if the investigations find any countries using unfair trade practices.

Andrew Hammond

So rather than ending tariff uncertainty, the court’s decision may actually increase it in coming months. The presumption in a growing number of these countries now under review, many of whom are longstanding US allies, is that the Section 301 investigations will lead to new tariffs in the second half of the year.
The announcement of the investigations comes as several countries are still seeking definitive answers to the Section 122 tariffs announced last month. This includes potential refunds of monies from the IEEPA tariffs. The vast majority of the more than $150 billion of US tariff revenue in 2025 and 2026 has come from IEEPA-underpinned measures.
Powers are also looking for further key clarifications from the White House on last year’s tariff deals with the US. After the court ruling, senior Trump officials said that these agreements with partners including the EU, UK, and Japan will remain. Greer said “we want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals. We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”
Yet, some of the agreements may no longer seem as advantageous as they did, in the new landscape of shifting sands.
Most countries that signed tariffs deals with Trump, including Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan, generally assert that they will continue to implement the agreements. One partial exception is India which reportedly will freeze the process of ratifying its US deal for several months. It had been anticipated that New Delhi would sign an interim deal in ‌March, followed by a full deal later, but that timetable has been postponed.
The EU’s position is not 100 percent clear. While the European Commission wants, in principle, to stick to the terms of its deal (the so-called Turnberry deal), European Parliament legislators have repeatedly delayed ratification. Trade Committee Chair Bernd Lange recently said “who can guarantee that the final outcome will not mean even higher tariffs for the EU? It is not enough to simply assume — on both sides — that we will end up within the Turnberry framework. We need clarity.”
Lange’s point is shared widely by allies that, sometimes only reluctantly, agreed tariff deals with Trump.
Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” approach may have been a winning business formula for him in the 1980s US. Yet, it is much more challenging to translate it to the huge complexity of today’s global strategic landscape.

• Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE Ideas at the London School of Economics.