I negotiated for a living. What Trump is doing is not negotiating [View all]

The sane washing of Trump's maniacal public displays are being normalized as a negotiating tactic. Canada, Mexico, Panama and Denmark. Trump is publicly humiliating America's friendly neighbors and the MSM acts like it is some sort of brilliant negotiating tactic.

I was a union officer in Boston and negotiated nearly 100 union collective bargaining agreements (CBA) for electricians, plumbers, H-Vac and other maintenance workers who worked at hospitals, sports facilities, museums, pharmaceutical facilities, hospitals and colleges in the Greater Boston Area. And let me tell you, publicly insulting, out of the clear blue sky and for no reason, is no way to open negotiations.

The United States has the upper hand with all our neighbors. If we needed to place a military base in Greenland, it would have been easy to accomplish by sharing the operation with our NATO brother in Denmark. There is no need to pick a fight with Mexico. They know they need America as a trading partner. And Canada? Can we have a more secure border than our neighbors to the North. How hard could it be to reach a favorable agreement with them without all this caustic rhetoric. Also, Panama. How hard could it be to assert our dominance at a negotiating table with them to secure the canal?

Look, sometimes you need to go public as negotiations reach impasse. But it's not your opening salvo, especially with a friendly opponent on the other side of the table. Trump is not exercising negotiating skills. He's falling back on what he's most comfortable being. A bully.