Trudeau takes measured tone against trump tweets
After a weekend summit that seemed to go as smoothly as it could under the circumstances, thousands of people from seven countries saw their yearlong, intensive efforts end in a panic Saturday night. Not because the Group of Seven talks themselves featured any disasters before they wrapped up. But because United States President Donald Trump did exactly what many feared he would by dismissing all of that work in tweets. Posted while flying on Air Force One after he left the summit early, the missives hurled the summit’s outcomes, U.S. commitments and the international order itself up into the air with the president.
In the aftermath of a behemoth endeavour that had resulted in a formal communiqué, Trump tweeted that he was instructing his people not to “endorse” that document. Worrying his allies, he also threatened that his administration was looking at new tariffs on automobiles “flooding” the U.S. market. One official described finding out about it right away because of the audible uproar among journalists at the summit in La Malbaie, Que.
The tweets set off an unprecedented flurry of insults, misinformation and literal accusations of warmongering by Trump officials on American television networks Sunday.
But even as rhetoric south of the border was spiralling out of control, public statements out of Canada and Europe were measured, an apparent attempt to salvage the work that had been done at the summit.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted Sunday afternoon that leaders should be “worthy” of their people, but said major commitments had been made. “The historic and important agreement we all reached,” Trudeau tweeted, is “what matters.” He would not take questions on Sunday morning, but Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to reporters and said her government doesn’t believe “ad hominem attacks” are useful.
It was the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, who went the farthest, in saying that trust could be very rapidly destroyed with a tweet, and that a united Europe should be the response to “America first.”
The furor risked overshadowing any progress that had actually been made at the G7, such as $6.8 billion in funding commitments for girls and women in developing countries, a new oceans strategy and a five-party “plastics charter” excluding the U.S. and Japan.
TRUDEAU TAKES MEASURED TONE DESPITE FUROR OVER TRUMP’S TWITTER ATTACKS
At the summit itself, Trump and his counterparts exchanged sharp words. During one meeting, an official said the other leaders, and Macron in particular, took pains to list off the U.S.’s various import tariffs to Trump, in an attempt to show him that trade barriers are not one-sided and Americans are not victims of the rest of the world. Later, at a cultural event, there was a “really good atmosphere,” another official said.
Trump changed none of the positions he was being criticized for, but when the president took off on Saturday morning saying the G7 had been “tremendously successful” it seemed that a potential crisis had been averted.
On Sunday, despite the tweets, Trudeau’s office was still under the impression that the communiqué stands — although the real question may be whether the U.S. can be trusted to support what’s in it. Top officials had been working around the clock and sleeping little to put it together. The seven leaders had added extra meetings on Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss the text. All had signed off on its eight pages, and it had already been published by the time Trump made his grievances known.
“I think Canada did a great job at quite a difficult time,” a French official said. “Being able to make everyone agree on one communiqué wasn’t an easy task. And the U.S. decision on tariffs only a few day before the summit made the task even harder.”
Canada and the European Union are preparing to impose retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. after it extended global steel and aluminum tariffs to them and to Mexico. The idea of free, multilateral trade had seemed under threat. But the communiqué as signed off by U.S. officials includes a paragraph that underlines “the crucial role of a rules-based international trading system. It says the countries “continue to fight protectionism” and “strive to reduce tariff barriers, nontariff barriers and subsidies.”
Aside from the document itself, officials from other countries, including the U.S., seemed pleased with Canada’s planning and execution of the $604-million project, almost 70 per cent of which was being spent on security.
About 400 Canadian staff were working out of a summit office and thousands more were involved. Local people in Charlevoix seemed “proud” and expressed no security anxieties to the prime minister, according to an official who accompanied him on a visit to the site two weeks before the summit. Several officials made the point that it had been lovely weather over the weekend.
“It was obviously a large operation across multiple locations, but everything from transportation to accommodation and security ran smoothly,” a British official said. “Our delegation left very impressed.”