Another drama, another cliffhanger, another disaster averted at the last minute. Donald Trump had saved the world. Again.

The strange saga of the US-Mexico trade war that never was serves up the latest example of Trump’s reality-television presidency. Time and again he has manufactured crises, set deadlines, made threats, pulled back from the brink and claimed victory while keeping the details notoriously vague.

The cycle of razzle-dazzle enables Trump to galvanise his support base, selling himself as a man of action, and keeps the media mesmerised while his government pushes reforms or slashes regulations on the quiet. When the smoke clears, however, not much of substance has really changed.

“It’s a pretty simple pattern,” the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, told the Senate on Monday. “The president stakes out a maximalist position but never clearly defines his objectives. That way, after he backs himself into a corner, he can use a deal of any kind, even if it’s merely a fig leaf, to justify retreating from whatever misguided policy he’s threatened. Then he declares victory, having done little to nothing to solve the underlying problem.”

Noting Trump’s penchant for big summits, photo ops, scare tactics and belligerent threats, Schumer added: “What he did here is typical of the president’s gameshow foreign policy: a big production without very much progress.”

Trump honed his mastery of the medium as host of The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice from 2004 to 2015. He was obsessed with ratings and not shy about exaggerating them. In the Trump Tower boardroom he was both businessman and showman, a master of suspense as contestants dreaded the words “You’re fired!” at the show’s climax.

What he did here is typical of the president’s gameshow foreign policy: a big production without very much progress Chuck Schumer

Randal Pinkett, the winner of The Apprentice in 2005, said on Tuesday: “The idea of being the centre of attention and sucking up all the oxygen in the room? When you’re host of The Apprentice, that might be your job, but not when you’re president of the United States. That’s about policy, not media whoredom.”

But now Trump occupies the Oval Office and the “contestant” in his latest public spectacle was Mexico. The president was reportedly incensed that, despite all his promises, border crossings in May reached their highest level in more than 12 years (in excess of 132,000 people). On 30 May he reached for import taxes – tariffs – which have become his weapon of choice.

“On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP,” he suddenly announced on Twitter. “The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied.”

Immediately, the clock was ticking towards the 10 June deadline. Senior officials from both countries met for talks with billions of dollars at stake – Mexico is America’s biggest trading partner. The US’s new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada was suddenly imperilled.

Trump had generated an entirely unnecessary crisis. Business leaders were on edge, Democrats were outraged and even Senate Republicans threatened to rebel, warning against a self-inflicted wound. The president travelled to Europe, dined with the Queen and attended D-Day commemorations, but he insisted he wasn’t bluffing: the crippling tariffs would go ahead.

Then, at 8.31pm last Friday, came a bolt out of the blue. “I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico,” Trump tweeted. “The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended.”

The US announced that Mexico had agreed to deploy 6,000 national guard personnel throughout the country, giving priority to its southern border. In addition, people crossing the US southern border to seek asylum would be rapidly returned to Mexico to await the adjudication of their asylum claims; Mexico would offer them jobs, healthcare and education.

Trump hyped the apparent concessions as evidence that his tariff threats had worked and was hailed for strong leadership by friendly media outlets. But not for the first time, the New York Times burst his bubble, reporting that the much vaunted “deal” was merely warmed-up leftovers. It said the Mexican government had already pledged to deploy the national guard in March, and that the plan for asylum seekers had been worked out last December.

Randal Pinkett, left, won The Apprentice in 2005. Being president is ‘about policy, not media whoredom’, Pinkett said. Photograph: Bennett Raglin/WireImage

Critics suggested that it was in fact Trump who had backed down, realising he could not win a fight against his own party and that his trade wars are already taking a toll on the economy. Friday’s disappointing job figures, for example, were a warning sign.

Sowing further confusion, the president went on to claim he had an immigration and security deal with Mexico, only for the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, to deny that such a deal exists. On Tuesday, Trump taunted reporters at the White House by waving around a folded piece of paper that he claimed was a deal with Mexico. “Without the tariffs, we would have had nothing,” he said.

Analysts fear that the perceived success will encourage Trump to intensify his trade war with China. Even old allies are concerned. Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 11 days as White House communications director in 2017, said: “You can yo-yo the tariffs and create a lot of buzz and fanfare around what you’re doing and ‘control the news cycle’ but you can’t yo-yo the tariffs without it having a consequential effect on business. Just look at the data.”

But he added: “That does work for him because, remember, his attitude is: ‘I’m going to worry about the base, everything else will take care of itself.’ And if you think about it from that perspective, he’s probably right because as long as he gets voter participation numbers with his base close to where he was, he’s likely to win re-election.”

The reality-TV presidency has produced some classic episodes. Two years ago, Trump raised the prospect of the existence of tape recordings of his private conversations with the fired FBI director James Comey. With the Washington gossip machine working itself up to fever pitch, he finally tweeted: “I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.”

Trump threatened the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, with “fire and fury”, only to meet him a year ago and insist there was no longer a nuclear threat – yet the country continues its weapon testing. In February, Trump declared a national emergency in a bid to get his wall built, then made an empty threat to shut down the border completely.

The president also relishes building drama and suspense around his appointments of senior officials and supreme court justices. None of it comes as much surprise to students of his business and entertainment careers.

One of his biographers, Gwenda Blair, said: “He’s experienced at getting people’s attention with something they’re not expecting or a reversal of the last thing they’ve heard, generating a headline with a tweet. He follows the saying: ‘You want a crowd, start a fight.’”

She added: “He’s quite the cliffhanger guy and also wants to make sure he holds on to those headlines and the minuscule attention span of a significant proportion of the population. He’s done it for decades, so why stop now?”

Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California, and former media consultant to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Part of Trump being Trump is the art of the deal and the cliffhanger. It has a complete reality-TV quality to it because each episode ends with the camera turned on him and the question, ‘Mr President, what should we do?’

“The whole point of reality TV is to get people watching and wanting to come back. Trump plays the media very well and the media continues to take the bait.”