Trump style negotiation

How much do we know about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump? Common perceptions may include a womanizer, a foot in mouth patient, or a racist and a sexist. However, in his book, “Trump Style Negotiation,” George Ross, an attorney and a negotiation expert who saw how Trump built his real estate empire, argues that the president-elect has an incredibly systematic way of thinking and solves complicated problems in a way that is almost unthinkable for ordinary people.

In 1974, the Grand Central 42nd Street and its adjacent areas were turning into a slum. The Commodore Hotel was losing its past glory, becoming an eyesore of the neighborhood. Trump, then a 27-year-old ambitious young man, planned to purchase the hotel and turn it into a modern-style hotel. And in spite of bankruptcy, he accomplished the seemingly impossible project by reconciling the conflicting interests between five different groups through negotiations – the Pen Central Railway who owned the hotel premises, City and State governments of New York, which had the construction permit, the hotel industry who detested the idea of having a new hotel, the tenants who would be forced out of the building once the deal is sealed, and the investors. Today, the once dilapidated hotel is called the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the landmark of New York.

Of course, some claim the opposite. On Wednesday, Trump’s autobiography “The Art of the Deal” was sold out on the first day of release in major bookstores in downtown Seoul. In his interview with the New Yorker magazine in July, Tony Schwartz, the author of the book who interviewed Trump for 18 months in 1987, confessed that he embellished Trump to sell more books, and that he deeply regrets putting Trump in the current spotlight. He added that the book is nothing short of a fiction, and it should be retitled as “The Sociopath.”

Ross argues that the essence of Trump style negotiations is to utilize one’s fortes and delegate tasks he is poor at. He says once Trump takes the initiative with his intuition and strong drive, the rest of the tasks naturally fall into the hands of the right people. By contrast, Schwartz warns that Trump cannot remain focused even more a few minutes, and that the world would be doomed once he gets the nuclear codes. One thing seems to be clear that Trump is a businessman to the marrow who makes his moves based on thorough calculations. It appears that there is so much to study about Trump for South Korea.

정성희기자 shchung@donga.com