For all of his adult life, and probably a good portion of his childhood, Donald Trump has been telling people he’s a genius businessman, a habit he continued to great effect on the campaign trail. “We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal,” he said while announcing his candidacy in 2015. “I’m a negotiator. I’ve done very well over the years through negotiation,” he claimed during a Republican debate in 2016. As president, Trump told voters, he would rip up existing agreements his loser predecessors had struck and use his singular set of skills to forge new, better (bilateral!) deals for the U.S., just like he had done over the course of his career. Unfortunately, the 45th president has hit a couple major roadblocks in his attempt to do so—stemming primarily from the fact that he is actually a terrible negotiator who hasn’t struck the kind of deal he spoke about on the campaign trail in some four decades.

All this is worth remembering as America’s allies retaliate against Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum, which he aimed at China but somehow ended up hitting Canada, Mexico, and Europe, too. And it makes complete sense when you consider the actual arc of Trump’s history as a real-estate developer. Indeed, as reporter Michael Kruse writes in a new piece for Politico, any successes Trump had in business occurred at the very beginning of his career, including the conversion of the Commodore Hotel to the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central and the building of Trump Tower. In those deals, according to Politico, he demonstrated a modicum of “salesmanship, verve, cunning, and good timing.” But his discipline and focus started to dry up shortly after those transactions and, hilariously, around the time he agreed to write a book called the The Art of the Deal, striking a comically awful agreement—for him—with ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, who said that Trump “basically just agreed” to all of his demands, including “an almost unheard-of half of the $500,000 advance from Random House and also half of the royalties.” (“What should have been a great deal on a book about negotiation actually is one of the most interesting pieces of evidence that he’s not a good negotiator,” Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra told Politico, noting that Schwartz got his name on the cover in the same size text as Trump’s. “I don’t think there’s a better ghostwriting deal out there.”)

Other cringeworthy deals at the time included Trump’s acquisition of the Plaza Hotel for $60 million more than even the highest estimates said it was worth (“How can I live without it?” he reportedly said out loud during the negotiation); the acquisition of the Eastern Air Lines Shuttle for, again, some $60 million more than it was thought to be worth; and his overpaying for football players as a team owner in the doomed United States Football League. Then, of course, there was his fateful 1988 acquisition of the casino that “quickly would become the debt-bloated Trump Taj Mahal.”

From there it was onto the bankruptcy-happy 90s, thanks to the debts he racked up in the 80s—which Trump, naturally, has now tried to spin as evidence of his business savvy. That period included a deal to build apartments on the Upper West Side, in order to avoid personal bankruptcy, in which he “pretty much gave in to whatever [neighborhood groups] asked for,” according to a Trump Organization vice president at the time. That era was followed by the fake-businessman era, in which Trump played a successful negotiator on TV but, behind the scenes, had mostly given up on big deals in favor of licensing arrangements. “Negotiations increasingly were for comparatively uncomplicated branding and licensing agreements,” Kruse writes, “in which others did the harder legal work while he put his name on labels and made promotional appearances.”

Unfortunately, though, it was The Apprentice years of pretending to know his way around a boardroom that convinced millions of Americans that yeah, this guy should be president. Which brings us to the other issue the deal-maker-in-chief is currently dealing with: that striking deals with world leaders and politicians is a lot harder and more complex than any of his failed business negotiations in the past. Hence, the bungled repeal-and-replace health-care negotiations, the breaking of the Iran nuclear pact (without a better deal in place), the pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (without a better deal in place), retaliation by our biggest allies for his misguided steel and aluminum tariffs, and his on-again, off-again, on-again summit with Kim Jong Un.

Unfortunately, “what works in business doesn’t always work sitting across the table from a thirtysomething dictator who runs modern-day concentration camps and is bristling with nuclear weapons,” Kruse writes. As Malhotra told him, “When you’re an executive in the private sector and you badly want something, and you can’t control yourself when you really should have, you get hurt . . . When you behave this way in the public sector . . . other people get hurt.”

Or, as negotiation expert Marty Latz put it, in slightly more terrifying terms: “Nothing may have a more direct impact on the safety, security, and prosperity of the world than Donald Trump’s negotiating skills.”

One thing we can count on? Whichever way any of this shakes out, whether it’s a protracted trade war or an actual nuclear war, Trump will declare himself a success. “He believes he’s in a position of strength no matter where or when he is,” a former Trump Organization executive told Politico. “You have to understand that. If you knock Donald on his ass, he will tell you the best position to be in is on your ass.”

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Even The Wall Street Journal has had it with this guy

To give you an idea of just how unpopular Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs are, here’s what the über-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board had to say about the situation:

“So much for Donald Trump as genius deal-maker. We are supposed to believe his tariff threats are a clever negotiation strategy, but on Thursday he revealed he’s merely an old-fashioned protectionist. His decision to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada, and Mexico will hurt the U.S. economy, his own foreign policy, and perhaps Republicans in November. . . . He aspires to be Ronald Reagan but his tariff folly echoes of Herbert Hoover.”

For people who perform ritual sacrifice as an offering to the Gipper, those words are colder than ice.

But hey, don’t take their word for it . . .

Take the word of the union representing the people that the tariffs are allegedly supposed to be helping:

Oh, the president probably broke a federal law this morning

When you’re dealing with an administration in which corruption is literally baked into its DNA, it’s hard to get upset about things that would be a scandal in normal times. But just for those of you keeping track at home, Trump’s tweet this morning suggesting that traders would be excited about the forthcoming jobs numbers, an hour and nine minutes before the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 223,000 jobs were created in May, beating expectations? That definitely broke decades of protocol and may also have broken federal law.

Later, seeking to downplay the situation, Trump’s National Economic Council director-slash-labrador in a pinstripe suit, Larry Kudlow, actually made the situation worse, acknowledging that he had given Trump the positive numbers, which Trump was clearly hinting at this morning. “It’s my call whether to send [the numbers] over to the president,” Kudlow told CNBC. “That’s just what I did last evening. . . . He chose to tweet. . . . I don’t think he gave anything away.”

People outside the White House had a slightly different take, with former Bush secretary Ari Fleischer telling The Washington Post, “This certainly was a no-no. The advance info is sacrosanct—not to be shared.” Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for the Obama administration, said the information is closely guarded, with Cabinet members often being left in the dark until it’s public. “It’s market moving and it creates instability and uncertainty in markets,” Furman said. “But secondly, and fundamentally, it’s really important that government statistics are perceived as being nonpartisan, nonpolitical data.”

Luckily, in the Trump administration, we’ve come to expect the president to violate securities laws every now and again.

Scott Pruitt spent $3,230 on fancy pens and journals

When your office is outfitted with a $43,000 illegal phone booth, some shitty old Bics just won’t do:

“The cost of the Qty. 12 Fountain Pens will be around $1,560.00,” the staffer e-mailed Aug. 14 to Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s head of scheduling and advance—and a trusted confidante dating to his Oklahoma days. “All the other items total cost is around $1,670.00 which these items are in process. Please advise.”

“Yes, please order,” Hupp responded later that day. “Thank you.”

In a statement, E.P.A. spokesman Jahan Wilcox said the purchases “were made for the purpose of serving as gifts to the Administrator’s foreign counterparts and dignitaries upon his meeting with them.” They definitely had nothing to do with Pruitt’s habit of spending taxpayer dollars on questionable things like the aforementioned phone booth, six-figure trips abroad, five-star dinners with accused child molesters, and avoiding sitting in coach at all costs.

Elsewhere!

Jamie Dimon Says the Economic Recovery Is a Long Way from Over (Bloomberg)

Bill Gross Blames His Big Loss This Week on Fallout from Italy’s Woes (Bloomberg)

Italian political crisis is a black swan testing the fate of European banks (CNBC)

Tesla workers say factory paint shop has had multiple fires, causing more problems than Tesla let on (CNBC)

Trump’s tariffs on U.S. allies will shrink the savings Americans gained from tax cuts (CNBC)

China stands up for free trade on eve of U.S. commerce chief’s visit (Reuters)

Trudeau says NAFTA talks broke down after Pence made ultimatum (Washington Post)

“These People Have Lost Their Minds”: A Viacom Insider Unloads About the Redstone-Moonves Grudge Match (The Hive)

Michael Cohen to Reporter: “What I’m Going to Do to You Is Going to be F*cking Disgusting” (Daily Intel)

Woman stopped for driving bumper car on the highway (UPI)