Analysis: How Trump builds power for himself with 'no details' trade deals

WASHINGTON — For lawmakers and foreign leaders searching for the details of the multibillion-dollar trade deals Donald Trump has been making with a number of foreign governments, the president says there are none. That’s by design — to give himself even more powers.

The dealmaker-in-chief himself dropped that revelation Tuesday morning, after financial analysts, lawmakers and foreign governments have — for months — been waiting for his administration to put some meat on the bones of his rather vague trade agreements.

During a sometimes testy live phone interview with CNBC’s morning show, co-anchor Becky Quick said this about Trump’s various trade pacts: “We have been trying to figure out the details on that, Mr. President, so we appreciate the clarity on that.”

“Yeah, well, there are no details,” Trump responded.

He then used his recently announced trade deal with the European Union as an example, making clear that he structured the arrangement to give one individual almost exclusive say over how it would work: himself.

“The details are $600 billion to invest in anything I want. Anything. I can do anything I want,” Trump said.

The telling description might have been focused on trade arrangements, but it also could apply to much of what has been a bulldozer-like second term so far. Over the past seven months, Trump 2.0 has steamrolled over norms, written a new how-to manual on usurping Congress’ authority and blown through traditional limits on executive powers that his predecessors did not challenge.

Asked what the president meant when he told CNBC there were “no details,” a White House official countered by saying in an email, “He literally goes on to explain the details of these details.” The official didn’t elaborate or offer any specifics about trade deal mechanics when prompted in a follow-up email.

Trump also made clear in his CNBC interview that he, and only he, would punish the EU and its member countries if the bloc fails to pony up the $600 billion payment.

During the same interview, co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the president, “What kind of teeth are in those investments? Meaning, what would force the EU to make those investments? If they don’t make those investments, what happens on the other side?” Trump did not hesitate: “Well, then they pay tariffs at 35 percent. No, no. They brought down their tariffs,” the president said.

“So they paid $600 billion, and because of that, I reduced their tariffs from 30 percent down to 15 percent. And a couple of countries [asked], ‘How come EU is paying less than us?’ And I said, ‘Well, because they gave me $600 billion.’ And that’s a gift. That’s not like a loan, by the way. That’s not a loan that, oh, gee, three years comes up and we have to pay it back. There’s nothing to pay back. They gave us $600 billion that we can invest in anything we want.”

Michael Gerhardt, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, called Trump’s “they gave me” mindset “quite problematic.”

“To begin with, Trump is supposed to be negotiating for the U.S., but it sounds as if he cut a deal for himself. The idea of a foreign nation or nations giving money to the president to use as he likes smacks of corruption,” Gerhardt said in a Tuesday email. “The framers fashioned impeachment to address presidential abuses of power and foreign nations giving the president presents or money for himself.”

Former Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., with whom Trump sometimes clashed during his first term, told CNBC on Wednesday that the president’s tariffs have been “based upon his whims, his opinions.”

Based on the president’s own words, the terms of each deal may reflect the same approach.

Two senior Senate Democrats said last week that Trump’s tariffs and trade policies and pacts have been intentionally vague.

“From day one, Donald Trump’s trade agenda has been nothing short of disastrous. Basically, it consists of a few lines on a napkin for the most part and a lot of flip-flopping on tariffs,” Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden of Oregon said during a hearing. “And farmers, businesses and workers are left in limbo.”

And that means all of the above groups must hang on Trump’s every word and action on tariffs and trade — giving his office, and Trump, even more power.

“Certainly, during the first six months [back] in office, Donald Trump has managed to weaponize nearly every corner of the Treasury Department to target his enemies or those who disagree with him,” Wyden said of the department whose secretary, Scott Bessent, has helped lead Trump’s trade negotiations with other countries. “And that has been to the detriment of the country.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said on the floor that Trump’s “trade war has been an experiment in chaos, dishonesty and inflation.”

The New York Democrat accused the president of “unwittingly sending a clear message to adversaries around the world: Under Donald Trump, America’s security, prosperity and technological edge are open to negotiation.”

Even if expanding executive powers was not an initial objective, one former White House adviser noted recently that the goal of Trump’s tariffs has shifted since he returned to office in January.

“The tariffs have now become unmoored from their original justification,” Robert Lawrence, an economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, wrote in an August policy brief for the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“Instead of aiming at reciprocity based on a careful study of unfair measures that needed to be eliminated to achieve bilateral balance, the reciprocal tariffs were transformed into a rate that could serve to anchor negotiations to open foreign markets for U.S. exports, encourage investment in the United States, and take other steps that accorded with the president’s whims,” added Lawrence, also a former consultant to the World Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “Some of the deals with several partners reflect the success that President Trump has had in using the threatened tariffs as leverage.”

Still, some Republicans contend that Trump’s new approaches to trade and tariffs, no matter their other consequences, were an economic necessity.

“I think that Donald Trump has come in and rewritten trade and economic negotiation policy for the United States of America,” former Florida Rep. Allen B. West told Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show” on Friday. “And it was about time. I mean, we could not continue on being abused by these other countries with their trade policies.”

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