Trump pushes America’s allies on trade before sitting down with Putin today
OSAKA, JAPAN » With an eye on the race back home to challenge him, President Donald Trump opened his most consequential trip of the year today by pushing allies on trade and defense spending at an international summit.
Trump opened the G20 summit in Japan by meeting with the host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, followed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He sounded optimistic about inking trade deals with all three and praised alliances he has strained in the past.
With an array of world issues on the agenda, Trump could not resist weighing in on events at home: As he held meetings with these world leaders, 10 Democrats stood on a stage in Miami as part of the first debates of the 2020 presidential race.
“I just passed a television set on the way here. I saw that health care and maximum health care was given to 100% of the illegal immigrants coming into our country by the Democrats,” Trump said, turning to Merkel. “I don’t know if you saw it, it wasn’t very exciting, I can tell you. ... So I look forward to spending time with you rather than watching.”
Trump was also set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin today, their first sitdown since the special counsel found extensive evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
The president, who in the past has disrupted carefully choreographed summits by attacking allies and adversaries alike, made no public mention of his recent complaints that the U. S. military alliance with Japan is one-sided, that Germany was taking advantage of the U.S. on support for NATO and that India’s tariffs on the U.S. “must be withdrawn!”
Abe and Trump discussed trade and North Korea, while the three leaders spoke about enhanced security cooperation in the South China Sea and Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that Trump has put on a blacklist and is viewed as a national security threat because of the possibility that its equipment could be used for cyberespionage.
And earlier, as Abe officially received Trump, the president waved over his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in- law Jared Kushner, both senior White House aides, to pose with him for the official welcome photo. Trump and Abe were later joined by Modi, who a day earlier was the target of a Trump tweet complaining about tariffs. The portion of the meeting open to reporters was convivial: At Trump’s urging, the three leaders engaged in a group fist bump.
But the day’s main event will be Trump’s first public meeting with Putin since the Helsinki summit last July in which Trump refused to side with U.S. intelligence agencies over his Russian counterpart.
Trump said in advance that he expected a “very good conversation” with Putin but told reporters that “what I say to him is none of your business.” His aides have grown worried that Trump could use the meeting to once again attack special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on the world stage, particularly since Mueller recently agreed to testify before Congress next month.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pressed the president to directly challenge the Russian leader on election interference and send a signal “not merely to Putin but to all of our adversaries that interfering with our election is unacceptable, and that they will pay a price — a strong price — for trying.”
The United States and Russia are also on opposing sides of the escalating crisis with Iran, which shot down an American drone last week.
Trump nixed a possible retaliatory air strike and stressed Friday that the “there’s no rush. There’s absolutely no time pressure” to ease the tension with Tehran.
Trump’s meeting with Putin will be the leaders’ first extended conversation since the two met in Finland, nearly a year ago. That’s when Trump set off an uproar by declining to say he believed the U. S. intelligence services’ conclusions over Putin’s denials of election interference.