Trump negotiates through aggression. It's his style

Instead of looking for another betrayal, it's worth looking at the broader context and remembering how Trump conducts international negotiations.

Soon we're facing a big meeting in Davos during the economic forum, where, first and foremost, they'll be talking about money for Ukraine's reconstruction. And despite the fact that we call it investments and present it to the Americans exactly that way, Trump still publicly insists on a different approach — he needs to return all the money that Biden "lost" in Ukraine (according to Trump's own estimates, over $350 billion). Therefore, talks about money upfront for Trump, both in general and especially in our case, are always very unpleasant.

"And now let's recall how Trump conducts unpleasant conversations. That's right, you guessed it — aggressively, no other way."

Therefore, every time a week and a couple of days before negotiations, any of his counterparts — whether friend or opponent, it doesn't matter anymore — will hear everything "most pleasant" about themselves.

A week before the meeting with Xi, Trump was introducing new tariffs and sanctions almost hourly. Three days before the trade deal with the EU, he called that very EU "the biggest failure in history". Two days before negotiations with the Brazilians, he prepared an executive order on 500% tariffs. And in all cases, in the end he had "warm, good, productive conversations with strong politicians who praised him very much" (almost a verbatim quote).

Therefore, don't be surprised that right now he considers Russia better at negotiations — we'll be meeting with him soon, and we'll hear a lot more of this. And besides — do you think he doesn't understand how painful this statement is given our diplomatic activities? But in this negotiation format, the more painful, the better for him.

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About the author. Oleksandr Kraiev, expert at the Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism.

The editorial staff does not always share the opinions expressed by blog authors.