I don't share the pessimistic view of the article which calls Trump unironically a „master negotiator", but thinks the EU Commission and Canada are too stupid to talk to each other before they would slapp tariffs on each other
I probably misremembered it, but they called him an hardline negotiator
The concern naturally points to another. After all, the Trump administration is full of hardline negotiators – including Trump himself – who are skilled in the dark arts of pitting allies and friends against one another.
Ah, fair. To me "hardline" doesn't say anything about being good at it, just that he's aggressive (which is true). But calling Trump skilled at negotiation seems wrong, or at least his skill seems to be in a very narrow type of zero-sum negotiation which is not well suited for the geopolitical level.