Trump touts his work for base in steel town

In tweets, he claims to have the backing of Asian leaders for his high-risk summit plan

US President Donald Trump told western Pennsylvania voters that his new tariffs were saving the steel industry and urged them to send a Republican to the House so he can keep delivering those kinds of results.

The President lent his weight to Republican Rick Saccone in the final days of a surprisingly competitive special election outside Pittsburgh that could reverberate nationally ahead of the November midterm elections. Trump framed the race as a tune-up for the GOP’s efforts to maintain its control of Capitol Hill.

In Moon Township, he repeatedly urged his base to support Saccone and stave off an upset by Democrat Conor Lamb in a district the President won by 20 percentage points over Hillary Clinton.

“The people of Pittsburgh cannot be conned by this guy Lamb,” Trump said, dismissing Lamb’s efforts to run as a moderate Democrat.

Democrats need to flip 24 GOP-held seats to claim a House majority. A victory in such a Republican-leaning district would boost their hopes and renew GOP concerns of a bad Novem- ber. Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine veteran and former prosecutor, has positioned himself as more representative of the district than Saccone, a 60-year-old state lawmaker. The Pennsylvania special election is to replace Republican Tim Murphy, who resigned amid revelations of an affair.

Trump made sure the workers in this industrial-heavy region see the new steel tariffs as “my baby,” even as Lamb and Saccone have endorsed the move. Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District has an estimated 17,000 steelworkers and almost 90,000 voters from union households.

Trump criticised media coverage of his decision to meet the leader of North Korea and complained that he doesn’t get credit for accomplishments.

Earlier, Trump said a deal with North Korea is “very much in the making”. “The deal . . . will be, if completed, a very good one for the world. Time and place to be determined,” Trump tweeted.

He noted in a tweet that North Korea has refrained from tests since November and said Kim “has promised not to do so through our meetings.” The president wrote: “I believe they will honour that commitment”.

The White House said talks would only take place once the secretive regime took “concrete and verifiable actions”. Trump tweeted that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had “spoken at length” about the planned summit, and that Xi had said he “appreciates that the US is working to solve the problem diplomatically rather than going with the ominous alternative. China continues to be helpful!” Trump also tweeted that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was “very enthusiastic about talks with North Korea.”

“The leaders of Japan and China see significant promise but also a certain risk in the prospect of a summit,” said Daniel Russel, a regional expert at the Asia Society and former assistant secretary of state for East Asia.

“For both Abe and Xi Jinping, the rhetoric of bloody nose and fire and fury was quite concerning. I’m sure [the summit prospect] comes as a relief to a certain degree. But the leaders must have each wondered why they hadn’t been informed in advance and — certainly in the case of our close ally Japan — why there had been no prior consultation before the US announcement.” — AP, Washington Post, Telegraph Group Ltd