At the end of last month, the tech billionaire Elon Musk abruptly departed from Donald Trump’s administration. His departure was not at the time as acrimonious as might have been expected by those relishing the prospect of the inevitable clash between those two monstrous egos.

A few days later, however, Mr. Musk took to his own social media platform to lay mercilessly into his former master’s flagship piece of fiscal legislation, which the president cherishes as a “big, beautiful bill”, characterizing it as a “disgusting abomination”, which will burden Americans with $2.5 trillion of “crushingly unsustainable debt."

There are those who might suggest that this eccentric, dope-smoking caricature of a movie villain isn’t necessarily the most obvious choice as a source of sensible financial advice. This is after all the man who squandered $44 billion on a social media platform, whose value he swiftly trashed and whose car company’s stock has tanked in response to his zealous support for the Trump administration’s project to cut countless public sector jobs (and in response to his embarrassing predilection for Nazi salutes). 

This is the science fiction geek whose narcissistic quest to lead the space exploration program that puts the first man on Mars continues to throw massive quantities of cash at the development of his Starship rockets despite their tendency to explode or crash.

Exploding and crashing is, of course, what Musk’s relationship with Trump then did. The president said his former ally had gone crazy and threatened to cancel his “governmental subsidies and contracts." The tech magnate called for his former boss’s impeachment and made implications about his association with a notorious sex offender. 

Musk hasn’t made it entirely clear what he originally disliked about Trump’s tax-and-spend law (apart from mutterings about “pork” expenditure on projects based in legislators’ own constituencies), but it’s generally thought that he had been disappointed that it doesn’t go far enough (some might say that it’s not evil enough) in terms of cuts to public spending and tax breaks for the mega-rich. 

It appears that his old boss had promised him rather more. 

The Muskrat isn’t the only one who might feel disappointed by Mr. Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises. His pledges to bring peace to Eastern Europe and the Middle East and to bring prosperity to the American people, within 24 hours of his return to the Oval Office, haven’t entirely been realized. Indeed, those not disposed to be generous in their judgment of the rambling orangutan in the White House might even suppose that his portfolio of empty promises has only made things incalculably worse.

Even his vows to slash the prices of groceries – it’s a “beautiful term” (the addled president says) for a “bag with different things in it” – have betrayed all those voters who only put him into power in the vain hope that he’d somehow get them cheaper meatloaf, bourbon, and freedom fries.

And, over here in the tiny island of Blighty, our embattled Prime Minister may also be ruing the day that he put his faith, his political credibility, and our nation’s economic health into the hands of that orange charlatan.

A month after striking a historic trade deal with the United States – which left things only significantly worse (rather than disastrously worse) than they'd been the day before Trump’s launch of his global tariff war – it seems difficult to see what benefits for Britain have actually been achieved by Keir Starmer’s toadying capitulation to the capricious mob boss who now runs the so-called Free World and who takes a perverse pleasure in goading his counterparts (most recently, the leaders of Canada and South Africa) in front of the world's press.

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The UK’s agreement with Trump had promised the cancellation of tariffs on US imports of British cars and steel, but the details of an implementation plan for this deal have, despite our typically polite and deferential attempts at chivvying our American cousins, been slow to emerge.

In fact, having been hit by an initial 25% tariff on steel exports and then having negotiated that back down to zero (in principle at least), or possibly just down to 10 per cent (or whatever the president’s latest global blanket baseline tariff on any given day might be – depending on how he slept the night before and how well his breakfast went down), this remarkably unclear (but still assuredly historic) deal felt somewhat stymied when, at the start of this month, Washington announced that it was doubling its general steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 per cent but that the United Kingdom would be privileged to be temporarily exempt from this measure and would only face a levy of 25% – which left us back where we’d started – unless we were able to agree the detailed terms of our deal within five weeks. 

Who knows where we'll be next month, next week, or in five minutes' time?

This uncertainty has, of course, negated any agreement we'd believed we’d so far reached with Washington – and apparently returned all the bargaining power to Mr. Trump’s team.

A few years ago, I pointed out that Boris Johnson’s ultimate failure, while in Downing Street, to strike any meaningful international deals – whether on trade, immigration, or climate change – came down to the fact that nobody on the planet trusted him. Not his fellow world leaders, his party, his MPs, his Cabinet, his officials, his electorate, or his wife. The man was (and remains) a world-renowned liar and cheat.

In the end, of course, Donald Trump has exactly the same problem as his old pal Boris. He’s a bully who (like all bullies) turns out to be a coward – one who, when his opponents stand up to him and call him out, always backs down. As his enemies Stateside now like to say – much to his immensely enjoyable chagrin – 'TACO' "Trump Always Chickens Out."

He’s a confidence trickster whose word can never be trusted. He’s a spoilt child, prone to tantrums and susceptible to flattery and bribery, who never keeps his promises. 

Give him a luxury jumbo jet or a hand-written invitation from a king to visit his palaces and castles, and he’s putty in your hands – at least until his next mood swing.

Nobody can trust him, and that (along with his well-earned reputation for abject idiocy) is why his plans never work. If Musk is a Hollywood movie villain, then Trump is a villain from those old American cartoons, one of those whose treachery always backfires, leaving the scorch marks all over his face as the bird or bunny vanishes blissfully into the distance. He’s Wile E. Coyote. He’s Elmer Fudd.

That’s why this petty king of bling has tended to be a remarkably unsuccessful businessman, despite his daddy’s money and his talent at self-promotion. It's how he has even managed the unprecedented achievement of losing vast sums of money running casinos.

Leadership, diplomacy, and business have at least one thing in common. They are based fundamentally upon trust. Without trust, without faith that agreements will be honored and will bring mutual benefits, they are nothing. 

Good faith is, as ever, everything. Good manners and good grace go a long way, too. That, Mr. President, is the true art of the deal.