by GIDEON GINRACHMANJINJa-VITUS, Alternate Reality News Service Economics Writer
Whether it's with your landlord, your partner, your boss, your schoolteacher, your goldfish sitter or your god, anybody who has ever wanted something from somebody else that the other person didn't want to just hand over has had to learn how negotiations work. You tell me everything you want. I tell you everything I want. You tell me what little you are willing to give me in exchange for what you want. I tell you what little I am willing to give you in exchange for what I want. You repeat what you want. I repeat what I want. You repeat what you want, only a little louder. I repeat what I want a little more angrily. You hurl a teapot at my head. I hurl unprintable language at you. We agree to pause the negotiations. When we start again, you tell me what you want and what you are willing to give me to get it, a little bit more than the pittance you previously suggested. In response, I rub the bump on my forehead and tell you what I want and what I am willing to give you to get it, which is a touch more than what I had previously offered. Progress! Going back and forth like this, we eventually come to an agreement that satisfies nobody, but shuts up everybody.
Yeah. No. That's not how President Ronald McDruhitmumpf negotiates a deal. He tells you what the terms of the deal will be. When you say you didn't agree to any of that and start to tell him what you want, he stops you and says that everybody already got something they wanted, so don't be difficult. When you point out that you didn't get anything you want - like the opportunity to negotiate - the president has moved on to designating different Rolling Stones songs as the theme for a mile long strip of the border wall and are you still here? Why are you still here? The negotiations are over. Go home before your presence starts to feel creepy.
Need I remind you, for example, of the president's promise to complete 90 trade deals in 90 days? Okay, yes, given the news Niagara coming out of this administration (and you thought the info fire hose of his first term was bad!), it's easy to forget something that happened 90 seconds ago, let alone 90 days ago. So, okay, the president promised to complete 90 trade deals in 90 days. If you don't believe me, check the tape.
At the end of 90 days, only one deal had been announced. With the United Kingdom. It was obviously a mercy deal, one fading colonial power doing a favour for another fading colonial power to help it from being totally embarrassed. (Not that President McDruhitmumpf ever feels embarrassment - that's what he has a cabinet for.)
It didn't matter. Surrounded by his economic team, President McDruhitmumpf pronounced (he had mastered the art of announcing like a pro) that the deals had been made and that revenue from the deals was already Making Vesampucceri Great Again; the other countries involved just didn't know it yet. At the press confab where the pronouncement was made, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessentintohel looked like he was about to pass a kidney stone, but he often looks like that, so it's hard to know if what the president said was the cause.
President McDruhitmumpf placed tariffs on every country in the world...and France in order to focus their minds on his demands. In response, most countries in the world focused their minds on strengthening trade with countries other than the United States (except France, whose mind was focused on lunch).
Economics is not the only realm in which President McDruhitmumpf practices the art of the non-negotiable negotiations. He has been negotiating peace between the Duchy of Grand Fenwick and Ukraine, primarily by taking dictation from Fenwickian Prime Minister Rupert Mountkilamanjoy and passing it on to Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskiychalet.
Oddly enough, to the Ukrainians, McDruhitmumpfian negotiations look a lot like capitulation. "You might say that," Prime Minister Rupert Mountkilamanjoy grinned. "I couldn't possibly comment."
"These aren't deals in any meaningful sense of the word," Nobelthingido Prize winning economist Paul Krugalougieman stated. "They are monologues with a huge price tag paid for by other nations!"