...and lashes out at allies at the G-7
What happened
President Trump angrily broke with the U.S.’s closest allies after a contentious G-7 summit in Quebec City last week, threatening to escalate a trade war that could fracture the Western alliance. After leaving the meeting early for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump defiantly refused to endorse a joint policy statement agreed to by leaders from other attending powers—Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, and the U.K. In a series of acerbic tweets, the U.S. president said he rejected the agreement because G-7 host Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had made “false statements” at a post-summit press conference. At that presser, Trudeau vowed Canada would counter Trump’s recently announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports with duties on U.S. goods, and said he’d told the U.S. president that Canada “will not be pushed around.” Enraged, Trump called Trudeau “very dishonest and weak.” White House officials piled on, with trade adviser Peter Navarro saying there’s “a special place in hell” for foreign leaders who engage in “bad-faith diplomacy” with the president.
The fractious tone was set even before the G-7 meeting began, with Trump telling reporters in Washington that Russia should be let back into the group. Moscow was booted four years earlier for invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea; most G-7 nations oppose Russia’s readmission. During the summit, Trump berated other leaders for U.S. trade deficits and the cost of NATO, saying, “We’re like the piggy bank that everyone’s robbing.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the meeting’s outcome “sobering and somewhat depressing.”
What the editorials said
“America First” is fast becoming “America Alone,” said The New York Times. Trump knew he’d be on the defensive at the summit— for abandoning the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal, and imposing tariffs on Canadian and European imports—so he made a point of arriving late, leaving early, and insulting Trudeau “in a way defying basic social norms.” When Russian President Vladimir Putin meddled in the 2016 election, he could never have dreamed that Trump “would so outrageously, destructively, and thoroughly alienate” our closest allies.