U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with reporters, as he departs for travel to Pennsylvania from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C. U.S., July 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Columbia University. The European Union. Japan. CBS.
All have just concluded deals with Trump, and all are claiming they did well — or as well as they could. Reportedly, Harvard is also about to make a deal.
When will they learn? It’s impossible to make a deal with a tyrant because a tyrant will never be satisfied. Giving in to Trump — and that’s what Columbia University, the EU, Japan, and CBS have just done — only encourages him to demand more.
Trump does not keep deals. He backs out of them whenever he thinks he can strike a better one. Which is next week or next month.
That’s what he did when he imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada in violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which he engineered, which itself violated the North American Free Trade Agreement.
That’s what he has done and will continue to do with Columbia University and any other university he deals with. Harvard, beware. As Suresh Naidu, a professor of economics and international public affairs at Columbia pointed out over the weekend:
“Whatever onerous terms the school has agreed to will be deemed to have been broken in the face of a campus protest, an edgy syllabus, a leaked classroom discussion or even an acerbic student opinion piece. New civil rights violations will be imagined, new vistas of anti-Americanism on campus will be discovered, and the attacks will continue.”
Trump is lawless. His Justice Department is lawless. A president and his lackeys who are unchecked by law will not be bound by any agreement or contract when they think they can get a better deal by disregarding it.
It doesn’t matter whether the deal is with foreign nations, domestic universities, law firms, media corporations, or any other entity that believes it has an agreement with Trump. It doesn’t.
Trump has shown repeatedly through his career, and in his first and second presidencies, that he doesn’t consider himself bound by any agreement, ever.
He has stiffed contractors, creditors, and business associates. He has fired his own Cabinet officers and presidential assistants who crossed him, even after singing their praises. He has no honor, no duty, no sense of responsibility to anyone but himself.
The only way universities, nations, law firms, media corporations, or any other entities he threatens can protect themselves from him is to join together with other universities, nations, law firms, and media corporations, respectfully — and present a united front, so they have more bargaining leverage with him together than they do separately.
No organization, no person, no country should ever assume that they’ve made a binding deal with Trump. The art of the deal with Trump is to gain as much bargaining power as possible by uniting with others — and stand up to his bullying.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/