A Comparison: Trump’s The Art of the Deal and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War |
Trump The Art of The Deal, cover, first edition – Fair Use
Donald J. Trump’s The Art of the Deal (1987) and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (5th century BCE) outline winning strategies. The Art of War is a Chinese classic read worldwide in military colleges to appreciate the battlefield. The Art of the Deal is gaining importance because its author is now the U.S. President. Trump wrote the book as a realtor, but as the president, he is extending its lessons to reshape the global markets, with the central engagement being with China, the second most powerful world economy after the U.S.
To some readers, these two books share little except “Art” in their titles. Digging deep into these texts reveals fantastic insights about how Trump and Sun Tzu think about conflicts and their solutions. In this article, I draw central commonalities and differences between these texts.
Riskophilia
The Art of the Deal opens with the author saying, “I do it to do it. Deals are my art form.” Just as painters “paint beautifully on canvas” and poets write “wonderful poetry,” Trump says, “I like making deals, preferably big deals. That is how I get my kicks.” Trump’s mindset is searching for massive conflicts to get a big kick out of the deals. Trump imposed trade tariffs on friends and foes alike, almost on the entire world, and then boasted that countries are “kissing my ass” to make deals. Trump is doing exactly what he said in The Deal.
The Art of War opens on a cautionary note, warning that “war is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.” Therefore, Tzu says a conflict, when it surfaces, is “a subject of inquiry” that requires deliberations “to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.” The decision to go to war is never easy because the probability of ruin “can on no account be........