“The way he negotiates directly challenges what is almost a half-century of tools and principles and methods that have emerged in the field,” said Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, a professor in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, who is the editor of the Journal.

To start, Trump claims to use a zero-sum strategy in which he wins and the other side loses. The win-lose equation is considered out of date, ineffective and generally counterproductive among those who study negotiation.

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“Trump doesn’t understand the basic principle: To get what you want, you have to give other people what they want,” said Menkel-Meadow, who was at Georgetown Law during the Clinton-era shutdown and trained negotiators at the Department of Justice.

A solid deal-maker also doesn’t make an enemy out of his counterparty. Ideally in politics or diplomacy, he’s built up some goodwill with them. Trump, on the other hand, demonizes and belittles his political opponents (and sometimes his allies).

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“What we’re seeing here is the cost of not building a relationship with the Democrats and their leaders, and now when it’s absolutely essential because they’re more powerful and he needs their votes, he’s incapable of doing it,” said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, who wrote about Trump’s effect on business negotiations. “They don’t trust him; he doesn’t trust them.”

Lack of trust is the third critical piece of the failed Trump strategy. Negotiation experts concede that a hard-driving win-lose strategy sometimes can work. But not without trust.

Former President Lyndon Johnson, for example, was known for his hard-driving, persistent, negotiation tactics. And, of course, Johnson was able to push through civil rights legislation at a time when his own party was dominated by segregationists. This was a case of someone staking out a position and forcing everyone to his side.

But one of the key ways Johnson differed from Trump, Cutcher-Gershenfeld pointed out, is trust. “His word was his bond,” he said.

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The zero-sum strategy and willingness to walk away from the deal may also have been better suited to one-off real-estate transactions. Politics is different. “In negotiations with Congress, when you walk away there isn’t another Congress to walk to,” he said.