World leaders wary of dissing Trump
Global barbs directed at the GOP candidate have become increasingly muted
Foreign leaders who harshly criticized Donald Trump’s world views earlier this year have clammed up now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — and someone they may have to deal with if he winds up in the White House.
That doesn’t mean they no longer worry about many Trump positions, such as his proposals to build a wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, temporarily ban Muslims from entering the USA and force for- eign governments to pay more for U.S. troops stationed in their countries.
They realize they need to protect their relationship with the world’s most powerful nation by no longer airing their grievances as publicly as before.
President Obama underscored their concerns — expressed privately — when he said Thursday that the leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Japan are “rattled” by the prospect of a Trump presidency.
“A lot of the proposals he has made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines,” Obama said as he met with government heads from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom for their annual two-day event.
Many leaders who criticized Trump from December through March are concerned about his disdain for free trade deals negotiated by Obama and past administrations and his pledge to renegotiate defense agreements to make allies in East Asia and Europe “pay their fair share.”
Many of those critics, however, have hushed or shifted to a more conciliatory tune.
All embassies contacted for this story by USA TODAY declined to comment on the record.
Trump responded to Obama’s remarks Thursday, telling reporters in Bismarck, N.D., that “If they’re rattled in a friendly way that’s a good thing.”
Obama “is a man who shouldn’t be really airing his difficulties. ... He has not done a good job,” Trump said.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had criticized Trump’s stance to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S. earlier in the campaign, talked instead of common interests in early May. Asked how he would deal with a President Trump, who rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Trudeau said trade is key to shared goals of growth and prosperity. “The level of integration between the Canadian and American economies is unlike anything else ... in the world,” he said in Ottawa, according to Reuters.
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, a former ambassador to Washington, reflected much of the world’s puzzlement with Trump’s success on May 5 during a dinner for the Washington Institute on Near East Policy.
But unlike other Saudi leaders earlier in the campaign, he only offered friendly support to his American friends.
“For the life of me, I cannot believe that a country like the United States can afford to have someone as president who simply says, ‘These people are not going to be allowed to come to the United States,’ ” Turki said. “I just hope you, as American citizens, will make the right choice in November.”