Trump did an excellent job of being Trump at the G7.
He showed-up late to a meeting about empowering women.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trump-s ... -1.3966640A tardy Donald Trump created a distraction Saturday when he showed up late for a G7 meeting on women's empowerment.
[...]
His arrival was impossible to miss as security personnel had to open a path for Trump through a mob of journalists, many of whom were holding large cameras.
Trump stopped at the edge of the room and flashed a big smile in Trudeau's direction before continuing to his seat.
The rapid-fire clicks of cameras intensified as Trump made his way into the room -- to the point that the noise of all the cameras almost drowned out Hudon's remarks.
Fellow G7 leaders stared at Trump as he slowly made his way to his seat, which was across the table from Trudeau and next to International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde.
Trump decided to leave early to head to Singapore for his meeting with Kim Jong-Un. He ended-up arriving thirty-six hours early. It's fine, though - he only missed some climate change stuff.
On his way out, he shat upon Canada, for... reasons.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-s ... SKCN1J50H3“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, ‘US Tariffs were kind of insulting’ and he ‘will not be pushed around.’ Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!” the U.S. president tweeted.
In the same rant-by-tweet, he pulled-out of a communique which the G7 leaders had tried to pull together (and which was agreed upon).
What seemed to get Trump so excited was a Trudeau press conference.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/10/politics ... index.htmlPresident Donald Trump's chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday accused Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of undermining the US and its allies with comments he made at the G7 summit.
"It was a betrayal," Kudlow said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Kudlow was speaking following the G7 summit in Canada on Saturday. As Trump flew from the summit with US allies to a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, he lashed out at Trudeau for what he said were his "false statements" at a news conference and said the US would not endorse the G7 communique, a negotiated statement on shared priorities among the group.
And
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/white-h ... -1.4700061"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News.
He blasted Trudeau for having positive conversations with the president during the G7 meetings, then changing his tune in a "stunt press conference."
Trudeau's comments only included statements he's previously made, the Prime Minister's Office pointed out in a statement, adding that Trudeau had made those remarks privately to Trump as well.
Uhm... okay. These people look like adults, and their birth certificates probably indicate they are, by now, adults, yet this is how some of the highest-level representatives of the mightiest nation on the planet behave? I'd like to see those birth certificates, because something is amiss.
Trump also doesn't like Canada's dairy system.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-t ... -1.4699550U.S. President Donald Trump says Canada will have to dismantle its supply-managed dairy system or else Americans will dramatically curtail its trading relationship — a shot across the bow at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has vocally defended the country's existing agricultural policies in the face of U.S. opposition.
"No tariffs, no barriers, that's the way it should be and no subsidies. In other words, let's say Canada, where we have tremendous tariffs. The U.S. pays tremendous tariffs on dairy, as an example, 270 per cent ... we don't want to pay anything, why should we pay anything?" Trump said, referencing the Canadian tariff imposed on U.S. and foreign milk imports.
This article explains what that's all about:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/comme ... -trade-warBasically, Canada has a supply management system. Only so much dairy is produced, which keeps prices at a profitable level. The US subsidizes dairy, and has a significant over-supply problem which keeps prices below profitability. While that might otherwise favour exports, the entire world has a dairy overproduction problem. Despite having banned Bovine Growth Hormone long ago, which the US has not, Canada imports about five times more dairy products than it exports to the US.
If Canada dropped all dairy tariffs, we'd obviously have to dismantle our supply system and start subsidizing farmers. One might recognize that as a great way to put a lot of farmers out of business, cost consumers money one way or the other, all while not solving anything.
Trump's threats about imposing tariffs on auto imports doesn't really add-up, either.
https://www.ft.com/content/50e7bada-6a4 ... 230fa67aecTrump's world view seems to be roughly captured in a press conference he gave at the G7.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... -be-robbedIn a bravado performance, he also described Russia’s annexation of Crimea as “something that happened a while ago”, warned in the bluntest of terms against economic retaliation for the US’s introduction of tariffs, and described the way the EU treated the US as brutal.
Referring to his longstanding complaint about trade and his decision to impose unilateral tariff barriers on metals, he denied the move was contentious, but admitted that he had used strong language to emphasise that the current position could not continue.
“It’s not a question of ‘I hope it will change’”, he said. “It’s going to change, 100%. Tariffs are going to come way down because people cannot continue to do that. We’re like the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing. And that ends.
“If they retaliate, they’re making a mistake because you see we have a tremendous trade imbalance ... There’s very bad spirit when we have a big trade imbalance and they keep raising it so we never catch up. That’s not a good thing to do. And we have very, very strong measures that take care of that ... the numbers are so astronomically against them ... we win that war a thousand times out of a thousand.”
Right - to sum-up, Trump started the G7 by complaining that Russia should be included, because, you know, invading a European country is sure to be a forgivable offence to European partners. He then bumbled around, wobbled into a meeting late, gave a presser where he threatened, erm, the world, and then left early after agreeing to a communique. Because Trudeau said things he has said before, and privately told Trump he would say on more than one occasion, Trump reneged on the communique and shat all over the whole thing, and thereby everyone involved, from the comfort of Air Force One, via Twitter.
Okay. Well. At least next week in Singapore, the kind of war Trump might bumble his way into won't be about trade. Silver lining, all!
A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.