Trump diplomacy

For a while it seemed as if last weekend’s G7 summit in Canada “had gone rather better than expected”, said Will Gore in The Independent. President Trump had set an antagonistic tone for the meeting by slapping tariffs on European and Canadian steel and aluminium in the run-up to the event. He then made matters worse by pointedly turning up late and calling for Russia to be readmitted to the informal group of leading economies. The gathered leaders nevertheless succeeded in agreeing a final communiqué that they could all sign. However, when Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, in a post-summit press conference, reaffirmed that his country would be imposing retaliatory tariffs on the US, Trump “went ballistic”. He revoked his endorsement of the G7 communiqué, and branded Trudeau “very dishonest and weak”. He later widened his attacks to European leaders, accusing them of ripping off the US on trade and not paying their fair share to Nato.

This is the moment Trudeau and EU leaders have dreaded, said Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker. For months, they’ve tried everything – “from flattery to stonewalling to hours of schmoozing on the golf course” – to head off a clash with Trump. But it’s now clear that “the rift between the world’s great democracies that Trump’s election portended is coming to pass”. It seems Trump is indeed out to destroy the Western alliance, said David Leonhardt in The New York Times. How else to explain his decision to pick a fight with his allies over tariffs – even though US tariffs are at much the same level as those of the EU and Canada – while making excuses for Russia? “Maybe it’s ideological, and he prefers Putin-style authoritarianism to democracy.” Maybe the Kremlin does have compromising information on him. “Or maybe Trump just likes being against what every other modern American president was for.”

But this isn’t a case of Trump blowing up the entire post-cold War world order. For now, it’s merely a war of words, said Zachary Karabell in Foreign Policy. In any case, a shake-up of the global system would be no bad thing. The prevailing order evolved at a time when China was weak, the EU was in its infancy and the US really was the “indispensable nation”. The world has changed a lot since then. We shouldn’t “view the break-up of the existing system as a negative – provided that it’s replaced with something rather than nothing”. There’s the problem, said The Economist. On the evidence so far, Trump’s wrecking tactics will simply make life harder for allies, and easier for Russia and China. Trump and his supporters are right that the rules-based international order is in some ways outdated. “They are wrong that it is unnecessary – as a world of trade wars ( see page 11), nuclear proliferation, fractured alliances and regional conflict may soon show.”