▶ Full Post Text
Due diligence is not isolated to the company you’re buying. You should also research external factors such as mining jurisdictions, policymakers, and political risk. For instance, when Jerome Powell was appointed Chair of the Fed in 2018, I read every publicly available paper and speech he’d written. With Trump it was much easier. His entire negotiating strategy is outlined in \*The Art of the Deal\*, which is somewhat idiotic considering he effectively made his entire playbook public and then followed it almost verbatim in negotiations.
At this point, every foreign leader has either read the book or has advisors who have, and they have a general understanding of his tactics. Because of this, I believe they view situations like this as more of a distasteful annoyance than the existential threat perceived by the public.
For those who are not aware of how Trump negotiates, here is a breakdown using Greenland as an example:
He is using Greenland as an opening anchor to reset the negotiating space and make lesser concessions such as investment, mineral access, or Arctic cooperation seem reasonable by comparison. He doesn’t even want Greenland. The objective is to shift expectations.
Everything is about leverage, even bad publicity. “Bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all.” Denmark was forced to respond publicly instead of quietly dismissing the idea.
He never fully clarifies whether the idea is symbolic, tactical, or literal. “I keep people a little off balance. Uncertainty is a powerful thing.” This keeps counterparts guessing. \*Is this real? What does he actually want? What happens if we ignore it?\*
He uses shock to break institutional inertia. Arctic policy has historically been slow, technical, and bureaucratic, and this tactic accelerates stalled conversations.
So everything in this Greenland fiasco aligns with his book. Extreme anchoring, media driven leverage, strategic ambiguity, walk away theatrics, and asset centric thinking.
To reiterate, Wall Street knows all of this as do foreign leaders. This is in no way a defense of Trump, just an explanation on why it isn’t \*yet\* time to panic.