---
title: "The Madman Tactic Behind Trump's Moves — Sami Miettinen interviewed by Yle"
titleOriginal: "Trumpin toimien taustalla on klassinen hullun miehen neuvottelutaktiikka, sanoo suomalainen asiantuntija"
description: "Yle asked Sami Miettinen to read Donald Trump's tariff threats as negotiation behaviour rather than politics. His answer: this is the classic madman tactic, the same one Trump used with banks and property clients long before his political career — and it works because the threats are credible, the power is asymmetric and the American economy absorbs the damage better than its counterparties do."
format: "press"
show: "Yle Uutiset"
hosts: ["Roni Kuronen"]
date: 2025-02-04
language: "fi"
original: https://yle.fi/a/74-20141179
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/yle-trump-madman-negotiation-tactic/
---

# The Madman Tactic Behind Trump's Moves — Sami Miettinen interviewed by Yle

Yle's **Roni Kuronen** put a simple question to Sami Miettinen: what is actually going on when
the President of the United States threatens major trading partners with substantial tariffs?
Miettinen — a negotiation expert and former investment banker who has written three books on
negotiation, one of them specifically about Trump's methods — answers as a practitioner rather
than a commentator. The behaviour is not new and it is not improvisation. It is the **madman
tactic**, and Trump was using it on banks and property clients while developing hotels, long
before he entered politics.

**Why it works.** The madman tactic depends on the counterparty taking an unpredictable threat
seriously. Two things make Trump's version credible: the exceptional formal power of the
American presidency, and a demonstrated willingness to actually carry threats out. Once those
two conditions hold, the threat does the work without ever needing to be executed in full.

Miettinen's assessment of the results is deliberately unsentimental. Set the sentiment aside
and look at it purely from the American side, he tells Yle, and **Trump's conduct is impressively
tough** — even admirably so. The concessions arrived quickly: Mexico and Canada bought temporary
tariff relief with border security commitments, and Panama and Colombia gave ground as well.

**The asymmetry is the point, and the problem.** "These countries have no real possibility of
negotiating on equal terms with the United States," Miettinen says — which is unfortunate for the
weaker party, and yet, as he puts it, negotiations do not award sympathy points to the side facing
someone able to exercise hard power.

**Why the United States can absorb it.** His economic reading is that America takes tariff damage
better than its counterparties because the domestic economy functions well on its own, and because
existing tax rates are low enough that a tariff behaves something like a value-added tax rather than
a crushing burden. The same measure landing on a smaller, more trade-dependent economy does not
work that way.

The interview also covers Trump's use of his positional strength and of **anchoring** — opening far
beyond what he expects to obtain, so that the eventual settlement lands where he wanted it in the
first place.

Original recording (Yle Uutiset): https://yle.fi/a/74-20141179

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Yle Uutiset — The Madman Tactic Behind Trump's Moves — Sami Miettinen interviewed by Yle, 2025-02-04, https://yle.fi/a/74-20141179. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/yle-trump-madman-negotiation-tactic/.