When inexperienced poker players bluff, they tend to lean forward. It’s a classic “tell.” They know their hand is lousy, so they lean close to the table and puff out their chest, in a subconscious attempt to exhibit strength: “I’m not vulnerable! No sirree! My hand is strong! Maybe YOU should drop out!”
Conversely, the opposite is true. When an inexperienced poker player gets a really good hand, they tend to lean backwards, because they don’t wanna scare off the other players: “Oh, don’t drop out! I’m not threatening. See? I’m leaning way back, looking all accommodating. Stay! And let’s keep growing the jackpot!”
But these “tells” don’t work on pro players. They’re too savvy. So instead, they try to gain a tactical advantage by putting their opponents on tilt.
I learned about tilt from a guy named Phil Gordon. He was the poker expert on NBC/Bravo’s “Celebrity Poker Showdown” TV show and one of my very first PR assignments. (He also beat me at pool while using a mop handle as a pool cue. He thought that was very funny.) According to Gordon, he’d put opponents on tilt by doing something so jarring, annoying, inappropriate, or weird, they’d make emotional decisions instead of tactical decisions.
Whatever it takes. Hey, if it’s helpful to break wind, let ‘er rip. (And hope the casino is well ventilated.)
Another pro poker player I repped went far in the World Series of Poker, mostly via the power of tilt: He’d place bets without looking at his cards, wander around the table like a loony-tune, and act like a total goofball. He didn’t win, but he threw everyone around him for a loop, demonstrating an important truth: In zero-sum negotiations, he who puts his opponent on tilt is he who (usually) prevails.
You can steal an awful lot of hands, even when you don’t hold all the cards.
Right now, we’re in the opening minutes of a global poker tournament between Donald Trump and the rest of the world. It’s a fascinating foray into three-dimensional game theory because this poker battle has it all: Unequal hands, unequal pain-points, unequal chips, and unequal tolerances for risk.
And at stake is the biggest, richest jackpot in the history of the world!
Donald Trump considers himself the grandmaster of “The Art of the Deal.” More than anything else, he yearns to be immortalized as a great negotiator. (Nay, the GREATEST negotiator!) It’s at the core of his identity as a businessman.
Trump’s best PR path forward is to do exactly what he just did: On day one, impose painful tariffs on everyone. This way, you frontload the bad news. And then, after a few weeks of economic turmoil, the other countries will (hopefully) come begging to renegotiate — their hat in hand — because the possibility of losing the rich, rewarding, ultra-lucrative U.S. marketplace makes ‘em panic.
Basically, Trump is putting the whole world on tilt.
After a few weeks of horrible, devastating economic news (which, alas, we’re seeing now), the headlines will then change in a hurry: Every other day, Trump would have a new, positive tariff treaty to announce!
After the first few countries cave, it will incentivize all the other nations to get their [tushies] in gear and get a deal done fast — lest they wait too long and are frozen out of the U.S. marketplace.
Done right, it creates a win-win domino effect: The new American gold rush!
But it’s still a high-risk strategy for Trump, because there’s no guarantee the other top countries will quickly fold. Sure, we expect places like France to live up to their white-flag-waving reputations (“Je suis un lâche!”), but national pride is tricky to predict. In the foreign countries that viscerally loathe Trump, the politicians can score points by “standing up the American bully.”
That’s the second biggest concern.
The biggest risk is the enormity of the economy: It’s so large that there’s always SOMETHING newsworthy to report! Every day, there’s something new! From stocks to jobs to inflation to a zillion other things, there’s a very real risk that the drumbeat of negative economic stories will drown out the positive stories of new trade deals.
It’s death from a thousand cuts.
Eventually, the American people will make a decision: Was the pain of the trade war worth it? It could go either way. If it goes against Trump, the electoral cost will be enormous, and don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
The number of newsworthy economic variables for the media to publicize vastly outnumbers the potential trade deals that can be signed. Which means, the longer this drags on, the worse it’ll be for Team MAGA.
Over the long term, this isn’t a PR war that Trump can win. Not enough ammo.
That’s the bad news.
But the good news is, you don’t have to win a PR war when you can win the real one. And if the other countries cave ASAP, it’s no longer a war of perception. Because, at that point, it’s no longer a war at all.
A trade war is still a war. And the best PR is victory.
Just win, baby.
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