Before going in to the G7 summit, the 40- year old French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “G7 is going to be demanding.” What he should have tweeted was that G7 is going to be pointless—for lack of a better word. United States was once a nation with some clear allies, some adversaries and some relationships which were a work in progress; with more often than not, negotiations always on the table. Trump’s foreign policy, on the hand, is a case of zero-sum game, particularly on matters of trade. To the Donald, for America to win, others must lose.
There is no agreement between the US and others in the group on the matters at hand—trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal and Trump is not the one to meet anyone halfway. Ahead of the G7, he continued to lash out on these countries—what are traditionally known as US allies—on treating America “unfairly” in trade. But these world leaders are not mincing words. In fact, Macron who had been touted as someone who could forge a friendship with Trump and have some influence on him, hit back in response to Trump’s provocation that the summit could easily be G7 minus one aggrieved US, if it came to it.
Others in the group whether it was German Angela Merkel or UK’s Theresa May who herself is embroiled in tough and endless Brexit negotiations joined in with guns drawn. Following up on his protectionist promises to save what he calls the dying manufacturing industry and bring American jobs back, Trump imposed tariffs on the import of steel and aluminum for which the EU was given a temporary relief. The bloc has been seeking a permanent exemption since March when they were announced, with no progress.
To add insult to injury, but true to his style, he called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7. Russian inclusion was suspended in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Trump prides himself for his bravado. Not only did US intelligence agencies found Russia’s involvement in the elections of 2016, Trump is also currently under investigation for possible collusion.
But he largely seems unfazed by this noise and has remained open about his admiration for Vladimir Putin and how he runs the country. It is clear that the Canada and much of EU will not be open to this but Trump feels no restraint in floating the idea, semantics be damned.
That adds to the long list of matters that he and the rest of the G7 lot—who together with US hold over 60 percent of the global wealth—will not agree on. Looming trade wars remain the biggest concern for global leaders and there is no doubt when other nations get affected by tariffs, they will fight back in kind making goods expensive for the end consumers, not just from these countries but around the world.
Trump came out of a meeting with Macron claiming it was a positive discussion; a huge celebratory lap is not in order. It is characteristic of Trump to smile and shake hands and then retreat to the world of Twitter to write off all the goodwill he created with the leader he just had ‘positive discussions’ with. It seems inevitable that the western world will enter a trade war, when what Trump should have done was picked one enemy at a time instead of fighting all at once.
Had he been laser focused on his first and foremost economic adversary—China, he could have garnered support from his EU allies who are equally perturbed by China’s dumping and other illegal trade practices.
Instead, Trump is open to ending NAFTA, and inviting retaliatory tariffs which by estimates of most analysts will hurt American consumers first. Perhaps, that is what Trump meant when he campaigned on the platform of “America First”; and perhaps that is the one place where he will be unequivocally successful.
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