Trump’s Mideast trip: Forget peace deals, the president only wants a piece of the profits

As President Donald Trump is being feted by Arab Gulf rulers this week as if he were the monarch of his dreams, we can see that world leaders have his number.

In the past few days, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with China and Ukraine, have shown us there are basically three rules for dealing with the erratic, venal U.S. leader.

These rules reveal why Trump has failed as a self-promoted peacemaker in the Mideast and Ukraine. Peace deals proved too complex and time-consuming for a president who assumed his genius was sufficient to secure a Nobel Peace Prize. The work of peacemaking is much harder than trolling for profits.

The playbook for dealing with Trump also exposes a man whose ignorance of geopolitics and economics endangers America and the entire world.

Rule One applies to those countries whose leaders command great wealth, like the crown prince of Saudi Arabia or the emir of Qatar: Dangle pledges of investment riches (with all kinds of bennies for Trump and his family) and lavish ludicrous praise on a man whose elephantine ego is pathetically susceptible.

Arab leaders who follow Rule One can win sales of advanced U.S. aircraft, shared civilian nuclear technology (for the Saudis), and find a sympathetic ear for Gulf leaders’ opposition to a U.S. war with Iran. The Saudi crown prince can also buy U.S. recognition of Syria’s new government (run by someone once considered a terrorist) and American forgetfulness about his role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Watching Rule One in action is sickening.

No previous U.S. president ever accepted a gift like the $400 million luxury jet that Qatar has proposed as a new Air Force One. This is an unprecedented foreign freebie that presents like a bribe. It violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which specifically states that no federal official “shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Trump said he’d be “stupid” to refuse to accept the plane, even as newspapers around the globe are reporting on this pending corruption (and on the gross conflicts of interest, as Gulf investment funds shower his children’s businesses with money).

The president has also conveniently forgotten that the U.S. once labeled Qatar a “terrorist” country because of its financial support for Hamas.

America’s reputation is irreversibly tarnished when its president presents like a beggar whose poverty-stricken country can’t afford to buy him a new airplane, or as a rapacious leader in the mold of a tin-pot dictator. (Trump is supposedly impatient for Boeing to complete a new Air Force One. Yet, remaking Qatar’s gift plane to meet presidential security needs will take more than a year, and cost U.S. taxpayers tens of millions.)

Most disgusting, America’s major adversary, Vladimir Putin, understands Rule One all too well. He is wooing Trump with fantasy promises of major energy investment opportunities in Russia (never mind Putin’s horrible track record of fleecing or arresting foreign investors). And Trump’s chief Russia-Ukraine negotiator, another ill-informed real estate mogul, Steve Witkoff (whom foreign sources have referred to, in conversations, as “witless”), has been openly admiring of Putin’s ludicrous investment lures.

Most tragic, Rule One in the Mideast seems to have suspended the hopes the Saudis once nourished of brokering an end to the war in Gaza, ultimately followed by a peace agreement with Israel. Trump’s Mideast trip is avoiding Israel and is focused on dollar signs, not the hard work of a Gaza peace.

Of course, not every country is able to shower investment funds or freebies on the president, who loves to bully the less rich and powerful. Which brings us to Rule Two: If you are an economic giant like China, you can call Trump’s bluff and force him to back down.

Beijing applied Rule Two over tariff negotiations in recent days, with stunning success. Trump had recklessly imposed an across-the-board 145% tariff on China, expecting — as he had repeatedly stated — that Beijing would bow. Instead, Xi Jinping retaliated with 125% tariffs on U.S. goods, bringing U.S.-China trade to a standstill, scaring the markets, raising U.S. prices, and threatening to cripple U.S. agriculture and small businesses.

Trump blinked after one month — and make no mistake, it was a climbdown — by suddenly lowering tariffs on China to 30%, two-thirds of which will probably go away after a deal on halting exports of fentanyl components from China.

The president, notoriously ill-informed about the mechanics of tariffs, totally miscalculated his approach to China, with immense damage to the domestic and global economy.

Now, other countries less powerful than China are learning to apply Rule Two and counter Trump’s bullying. They include countries like Canada, Australia, Denmark, and the European Union. Allies whose help Trump could have used to counter Chinese mercantilism — if he wasn’t so convinced his brilliance could bully the entire world into following his lead.

Which brings us to Rule Three, which applies to countries less powerful or rich than China or the Gulf sheikdoms (and which Ukraine and the EU are bravely and smartly trying to use this week): Try to encourage Trump, using praise and a stiff spine, to live up to his own words.

This is tricky, since Trump has no fixed principles. Yet, he has pledged over and over that he is ready to increase sanctions on Russia if Putin doesn’t agree to negotiate peace.

For his part, Putin keeps refusing Trump’s proposal to enact a 30-day ceasefire before any peace talks. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has accepted the proposal, but Trump refuses to keep his word on pressing the Kremlin to do likewise.

When Putin proposed peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday based on a Russian capitulation proposal, Trump dropped talk of a ceasefire and urged Zelensky to go.

Zelensky called Trump’s and Putin’s bluff. He says he will travel to Istanbul to meet Putin (who has already refused to show up). If the Russian leader only sends flunkies, Zelensky will call for Trump to keep his pledge on sanctions. The European Union has pledged to impose its own new sanctions.

On Thursday, we will see if Rule Three is workable, or if Trump’s word on Ukraine peace is worth nothing. Judging by the past, it is hard to be optimistic.

But if Trump bows again to Putin, it will inspire other countries to band together to call the bluff of a president who has sullied his country’s reputation in the eyes of the world.