G-6 plus Trump
The alliance that won the Cold War is coming apart at the seams.
If you want to understand the global cachet held by the United States at the end of the Cold War, consider this tidbit: Former President George H.W. Bush persuaded the Group of Seven to hold its 1990 meeting in Houston. In July.
The mercury was in the triple digits, but that didn’t stop the leaders of the free world from assembling for an outdoor ceremony at Rice University. Giant air conditioners helped with the weather somewhat, but those just led to a different problem. To prevent the mechanized breeze from causing any sudden wardrobe malfunctions, so the story goes, staffers had to sew fishing weights into the hem of Margaret Thatcher’s dress.
At this year’s G-7 meeting in Quebec, the chill felt in the air isn’t from an overpowered A/C, and gallows humor has replaced any British slapstick.
The alliance that won the Cold War is coming apart at the seams, and Donald Trump is pulling the thread. His unilateral levying of tariffs on steel and aluminum on friendly market economies has been met with a sense of bewildered anger. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the tariffs were “illegal.” Justin Trudeau of Canada said they were “insulting and totally unacceptable.”
While this makeshift G-6 plus 1 struggles to stand together, Trump can’t even stand up for his own destructive trade policies. He left the meeting early rather than be confronted in person by his geopolitical peers.
Meanwhile, this unnecessary fight makes it all the more difficult to confront the true trade menace: China.
The Asian nation has the largest trade surplus with the United States and routinely flouts the international trade rules that the other G-7 nations regularly abide by. If Trump were serious about confronting China, he would be working to unite the G-7 and present a solid front in global affairs. He would sign the TransPacific Partnership, restart negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and ensure that the United States, not China, sits at the core of global trade.
Instead, he’s offered a hand to China by lifting crippling sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese telecom company caught doing business with Iran and North Korea.
It goes to show that Trump is not beyond negotiations. Nations like Ukraine, Qatar and, yes, China, have discovered that the key to successfully engaging with the United States isn’t going through the usual diplomatic channels, such as the State Department or the White House.
“These countries focus on what Trump wants on a personal level — to enrich his family,” Canadian commentator Scott Gilmore wrote last month. “So Beijing granted Ivanka trademarks, Qatar invested in one of Jared’s office towers, and Ukraine, with Slavic candor, simply wired half a million dollars to the President’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.”
The G-7 nations that insist on playing by the rules, on the other hand, suffer his trade tantrums.
Congress has a responsibility to check the president’s harmful tariffs. But for our international allies, Gilmore offers a bit of gallows humor — a policy recommendation that “has the stench of bad satire about it.” Instead of responding with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, the nations targeted by steel and aluminium tariffs should go after Trump himself.
“Until this President, every previous modern occupant of the White House divested their assets upon assuming office,” he writes.
So tax his operations. Freeze his assets. Refuse to grant visas for Trump organization staffers. The United Kingdom could even shut down his golf course in Scotland. That’s what he cares about, anyway — according to Gilmore.
For as long as Trump holds the White House, our allies must resist his attempts to rend an U.S.-centric international order that we spent a century building. Because the meeting in Quebec this weekend wasn’t the G-7. It wasn’t even the G-6 plus 1. It was the G-6 plus Trump. Let us hope the alliance that won the Cold War survives until it can be restitched whole again.