When playing the game last week we ran into two disagreements regarding these powers:

1). The Claw's game setup says not to place a negotiate on the sheet. The person playing this power argued that he could use one after switching the initial card. Even though its worded this way I feel the purpose of that instruction was to prevent negotiates from being played at all, since there is such an abundance of them.

2) My bro wanted to collect defender rewards for sending in the hired ships with the Merchant power. Even though the ships technically return to cards after the resolution, the majority decided that the nature of "hired" ships implies that the rewards would be given to the theoretical person the ships were hired from (and not my brother since he is getting rewards for his own ships)

I would appreciate your thoughts on these powers and our interpretations! Thanks in advance!

1). Having read claw yes game setup says that the first claw card must be non-negotiate, but the remaining rules do not preclude using negotiate as the face down card later. non negotiate may include by the way, cosmic zap, mobius tubes, any card infact as long as its not a negotiate card and the claws power can be used any time that card is played in an encounter. you just need to be aware that after the first regroup phase if the card is changed it could be a negotiate. part of the game is taking note of other players powers and how they are played. If you think he has put down a negotiate dont negotiate or cosmic zap or emotion control, or pay no attention to his strategy and take no action against it.

2). As to merchant, the person playing merchant must have at least one ship in the encounter and any extra he sends using his power are considered as extra ships they have in the encounter not anybody elses. if he loses he loses those cards if he wins. he gets rewards as if they where ships in the encounter for him, nobody else is taking the risk but him so the rewards are his alone.

thats my iterpritation of those 2

Yes, Merchant gets rewards for this hired ships; it's a very powerful alien.

The Claw is badly written and leaky.  See the Cosmodex for suggested corrections.