by Toh Han Shih
To learn how to deal with US President Donald Trump, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong and other national leaders, like Chinese President Xi Jinping, should take a leaf from Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal”.
This is pertinent, as Trump has imposed or threatened to impose tariffs on many countries, including Singapore and China. Trump sees himself as a penultimate dealmaker and expects countries to strike deals with him, if they wish to have minimal or zero tariffs from him.
Presumably, Gan, who is also Minister of Trade and Industry, aims to reach a deal as he visits the US from July 20 to 26. During this visit, Gan will meet US Cabinet Secretaries, members of Congress, and business and private-sector representatives, said a Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry press release on July 18.
Since Trump is not mentioned in the press release, Gan presumably will not meet him on this trip. Nonetheless, Gan will meet members of the Trump administration, so Gan will do well to understand Trump’s deal-making technique, as outlined in his boo,k which was published in 1987.
Gan is very humble and inclusive, yet smart and decisive and radiates goodness, a Singaporean doctor who worked with him when Gan was Singapore’s health minister told me.
It is good that Gan is decisive, but he needs more than that, because Trump can be unpredictable. Trump said in his book, “I like to protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach.”
Case in point is his purchase of stocks in Holiday Inns, a listed US hotel chain.
“The truth is I’m keeping my options open. I may ultimately go for control of Holiday, which I think is somewhat undervalued….. A second option, if the stock price goes high enough, is to sell my stake and take a very nice profit,” Trump added.
In his book, Trump related that he fired a contractor on the Trump Tower in New York and sued the contractor for damages.
“I hate lawsuits and depositions, but the fact is that if you’re right, you’ve got to take a stand, or people will walk all over you,” Trump wrote. “I’m very good to people who are good to me. But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.”
This shows Trump can be tough and aggressive.
“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it…. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without,” Trump advised in his book.
Gan should keep that in mind when he negotiates with Trump’s officials. Gan cannot afford to appear desperate to reach a deal with the Trump administration.
“As an adolescent I was mostly interested in creating mischief, because for some reason I liked to stir things up, and I liked to test people,” Trump wrote.
Now, as a 79-year-old man, Trump probably still possesses those adolescent traits, so Gan should watch out lest a mischievous Trump stirs things up and tests Gan.
Instincts
Some members of Singapore’s cabinet, like Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing, were Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) scholars and previously were career soldiers.
Trump has a partly similar military background as these Singapore ministers, since Trump studied at the New York Military Academy.
At the academy, Trump had a teacher who was a former drill sergeant in the US Marines who was physically very tough and rough. If students fought him, “they ended up getting stomped”, Trump recalled.
Most of Trump’s classmates took the opposite approach and dared not oppose this teacher. Trump took a third route, which was to win his teacher to his side. Trump related in his book.
“I also learned how to play him. What I did, basically, was to convey that I respected his authority, but he didn’t intimidate me.”
“If he sensed strength but you didn’t try to undermine him, he treated you like a man. From the time I figured that out – and it was more an instinct than a conscious thought – we got along great,” Trump added.
Trump said in his book, “Listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper.”
“I like to think I have that instinct. That’s why I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys,” Trump wrote.
By contrast, Singaporean officials tend to rely on logic, analysis and methodical research to reach decisions, from what I surmise.
Deal-making takes a certain intelligence, but mostly it’s about instincts, in the opinion of Trump.
“You can take the smartest kid at Wharton, the one who gets straight A’s and has a 170 IQ, and if he doesn’t have the instincts, he’ll never be a successful entrepreneur.”
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, which is regarded as one of the top two business schools in the US, along with Harvard Business School.
“Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Wharton was not to be overly impressed by academic credentials. It didn’t take me long to realise that there was nothing particularly awesome or exceptional about my classmates, and that I could compete with them just fine.”
In contrast, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, was very conscious about academic achievements, as he sometimes asked people what university they graduated from, a Hong Kong man told me.
During Singapore’s elections in 1984, Lee praised a candidate from the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), Mah Bow Tan, for having better grades than his rival Chiam See Tong.
Gan is a typical product of the Singapore system, which produced ministers. He was a government scholar who obtained a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in engineering from Cambridge University, one of the most prestigious British universities.
The question is, with his sterling academic credentials in a technical subject, how well can Gan tackle Trump, who plays by instinct?
Le Club and casinos
Trump became a billionaire not by scoring good grades in school and being a competent civil servant, as Gan did. One of the avenues by which Trump became a billionaire was joining Le Club during the early 1970s.
At that time, Le Club was perhaps the most exclusive club in New York, Trump recalled. “Its membership included some of the most successful men and the most beautiful women in the world. It was the sort of place where you were likely to see a wealthy seventy-five-year-old guy walk in with three blondes from Sweden.”
When Trump asked the club president to admit him into the club, the president told Trump that because he was “young and good-looking, and because some of the older members of the group were married to beautiful young women, he was worried that I might be tempted to try to steal their wives. He asked me to promise that I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing…. Anyway, I promised,” Trump recounted.
At Le Club, Trump met a lot of beautiful, young, single women and went out almost every night, he disclosed. “Actually, I never got involved with any of them very seriously. These were beautiful women, but many of them couldn’t carry on a normal conversation. Some were vain, some were crazy, some were wild, and many of them were phonies.”
This shows Trump was a shrewd judge of character. Trump said in his book that he sized people up very quickly. He will also size up quickly any foreign official he meets, be it the Singapore Prime Minister or British Prime Minister.
At Le Club, Trump met Roy Cohn, a well-connected American lawyer whose clients included Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, US media mogul Rupert Murdoch and mafia boss John Gotti.
Trump became Cohn’s client in a lawsuit by the US government against Trump’s company for alleged racist discrimination against black people in the company’s housing business.
Thanks to Cohn, the case ended with Trump making a minor settlement with the US government without admitting any guilt. Trump valued Cohn’s ability as a lawyer and loyalty in sticking with friends in times of trouble.
“I don’t kid myself about Roy. He was no Boy Scout. He once told me that he’d spent more than two-thirds of his adult life under indictment on one charge or another,” Trump wrote.
In 1986, Cohn was disbarred for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of clients’ funds. A few months later, he died of AIDS-related complications.
The example of Cohn shows Trump operated in a milieu with characters who were less than white. Given Trump has engaged a disbarred lawyer like Cohn, Gan should be as innocent as a Boy Scout and as shrewd as Cohn.
When Trump was bidding for a casino license in Atlantic City, others who tried to build casinos in this American city included Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse magazine, and Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine.
Playboy and Hugh Hefner were turned down for a casino license in Atlantic City because Hefner’s company had allegedly paid a bribe 20 years earlier in order to get a liquor license for the Playboy club in Manhattan, Trump wrote. Hefner said neither he nor Playboy had ever been charged for a crime.
Several officials did not like Hefner’s demeanour and style when he testified in hearings for a casino license, Trump added. “I don’t believe he helped his cause when he walked into the hearing in Trenton, New Jersey, with blazing pipe, silk suit and shirt, and a blond bombshell at his side. The licensing process is very subjective.”
This illustrates Trump has a good understanding of human psychology. Singaporean ministers like Gan would do well to strengthen their soft skills like understanding human psychology.
Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong.
The post What Singapore’s DPM Gan and other leaders can learn from Trump’s The Art of the Deal appeared first on The Online Citizen.
