U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement in the Oval Office of the White House on July 29, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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U.S. President Donald Trump likes to complain about how negotiating a peace deal with Iran is hard because its leaders keep changing their understanding, or even the terms, of any proposal. To which Canadians and everyone else can only say: “Welcome to our world, Donald.” Now Trump knows what it’s like to deal with an unstable, unpredictable regime that’s about as easy to pin down as nailing Jell-O to the wall.

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After literally decades of exploratory talks and negotiations culminated in Canada unilaterally spending $6.3 billion over eight years to build the Gordie Howe Bridge, Trump at the eleventh hour threatened to block its opening indefinitely unless Canada agreed to compensate the U.S.

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This is consistent with Trump’s changing or simply reneging on other agreements. Most notably, he changed his mind about the trade deal he signed with Canada and Mexico in 2020, deciding it was actually no good after having praised it during the signing ceremony at the White House as “the largest, fairest, most balanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved.”

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Some of the most egregious examples of Trump changing or breaking deals are documented by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in their new best-selling book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Trump concluded a deal with Ukraine to develop its mineral resources that has since been forgotten. With much fanfare, he convened a meeting of select global leaders on how Gaza would be administered by an international body but it went nowhere. After introducing his Liberation Day tariffs, he quickly reversed course and suspended them for most countries for 90 days when the stock and bond markets tanked in unison. He backtracked on threats to ban TikTok in the U.S. and now boasts about being No. 1 on TikTok.

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Trump’s claims about the Iran war change almost daily. After saying Operation Midnight Hammer had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, and that he would only accept Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” he settled for a much weaker deal with Iran, before that, too, blew up as bombing and missile attacks resumed over the past two weeks. An agreement to permit Saudi Arabia to build a nuclear enrichment capacity was thrown into question when Trump unilaterally declared the next day that the deal was contingent on the Saudis signing the Abraham Accords, which would normalize relations with Israel, something they had always made conditional on resolving the Palestinian question.

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In their chapter on Trump’s threats to U.S. Federal Reserve Board independence, Haberman and Swan describe how former Fed chairman Jerome Powell learned to deal with Trump. After recovering from the initial shock of Trump’s personal attacks on him, Powell realized the best strategy was to ignore the president, saying that “He wants you to engage. If you engage, you’re playing his game.”