Trump fancies himself a dealmaker, but he has a very limited skill-set. Most of his deals involve finding counterparties who lack either alternatives or information, getting them into very vulnerable positions where they have no choice but to accept a very one-sided deal, hammer them to increase the costs of not reaching an agreement, and then identify the maximum pain point they can handle to extract the most value for himself. It's a deal-making style that involves dominating the other party, rather than finding a mutually beneficial outcome for both sides where the other party wants to engage.
It's a pattern we've seen throughout his public life, and it seems to fit his business career as well. When he's in a position to impose a deal on the other party, he's very skilled at handling it. His counterparties are victims more than bargainers, and he's exceptional at squeezing them and ratcheting up the pain. But when he's in an actual negotiation, dealing with folks that are strong or have alternatives or have limits that prevent them from agreeing to a bad deal...well, Trump is just lost.
Hence his tariff strategy. He assumed that other countries would capitulate, allowing him to do the types of "deals" he knows how to do. But that didn't happen, and now he's kind of at sea. No one's offering him anything that will materially improve the US' trade position, and he doesn't have the skills or the temperament to actually negotiate to a better outcome.
It looks like he's going to try to fall back on what he would have done if he hadn't been so wrong about the state of play - just declare an outcome that he will unilaterally impose and call it a "deal" - but that's not likely to work. He's going to have to come to the table with our major trading partners, because he can't afford the economic pain; and because he's botched things so badly over the last two months, it's not going to end well.
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