President talks trade in London
Leaders disagree on alliance’s usefulness
President Donald Trump, in London for two days of NATO meetings, signaled Tuesday that the United States’ trade war with China could drag on for some time, met with French President Emmanuel Macron and raised the possibility of another trade war – this one with France.
Trump suggested it might be better to wait to sign a deal with Beijing until after the 2020 presidential election. He has threatened to impose 15% levies on an additional $160 billion in Chinese goods if an agreement is not reached by Dec. 15.
Trump and Macron talked on the sidelines of the NATO meetings, and Trump lashed out over Macron’s recent comments about NATO’s vitality.
In a further ratcheting up of tensions, the White House said it was considering imposing tariffs on up to $2.4 billion worth of French goods in response to a digital services tax targeting U.S. tech companies.
LONDON – President Donald Trump lashed out at French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday as the two leaders met for talks on the sidelines of NATO meetings in Britain’s capital.
Trump is in London for a gathering connected to the military alliance’s 70th anniversary amid quarrels over defense spending, fights about trade and climate policy, rifts over Turkey’s actions in Syria, and Iran. The official program starts Wednesday.
But ahead of that, Trump said Tuesday that recent comments from Macron that NATO is experiencing “brain death” were “very nasty” and “very insulting” to the alliance’s other 28 members. “Nobody needs NATO more than France,” he said.
“It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make,” Trump also said as his NATO visit now risks being overshadowed by his meeting with Macron.
“Macron is seizing (the) moment, seeking to be disruptive in his own way, and so we will see how that works,” said Heather Conley, a foreign affairs expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Among Macron’s disruptions: continuing to argue for the relevance of the Iran nuclear deal from which Trump has withdrawn; announcing at the end of August that Europe needed to seek a greater accommodation with Russia and China; and his “brain death” comments in an interview in The Economist and a reference, in part, to NATO member Turkey’s incursion into Kurdish-held Syria to root out fighters it considers terrorists but who had also been assisting U.S.-led forces battling the Islamic State group.
Macron also has long argued that Trump’s exit from the international climate accord was a mistake. And France’s president wants the military alliance, founded in 1949 as a bulwark against the then-Soviet Union, to pivot more toward fighting global terrorism.
Trump has repeatedly called the alliance “obsolete” and publicly attacked NATO members for failing to meet defense spending commitments, a scenario that has slowly started to be rectified as more NATO allies meet required 2%-of-GDP spending levels. At last year’s NATO summit, Trump arrived late and called Germany “delinquent” and a “captive” of Russia.
Macron “wants a real strategy discussion” about NATO, said Thomas Gomart, director of IFRI, a Paris-based international relations think tank. “Not just to pretend that everything is OK.”
Still, after Trump and Macron met in person on Tuesday, the U.S. leader struck a conciliatory tone in front of media, although the chemistry between the two leaders appeared cooler than it has in past encounters.
“We have a minor dispute. I think we will probably be able to work it out,” Trump said.
Macron said NATO needs to refocus itself on new threats, not just money.