Definition of "horse-trading" []

• Negotiation characterized by hard bargaining and shrewd exchange: political horse-trading. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He was not going to conduct his presidency through interest groups, by balancing one constituency against another and engaging in the customary horse-trading on the Hill."
• "They devise double-date bidding races 2018 and 2022 to multiply the opportunities for horse-trading; and they ignore the merits of the bids themselves to send a World Cup to Qatar, a tiny Gulf state with brutal summer temperatures, in return for bribes – it is alleged – in relation to a number of executive committee members."
• "But the Democrats cannot agree to the Republicans' absolutist demands, in part because the arithmetic of deficit reduction does not work without tax increases and cuts in defence spending, in part because they passionately believe that with taxes the lowest for 50 years, the US's rich should share in the pain and in part because in any human exchange there is an element of horse-trading."