It must have been all the big words.
WASHINGTON — The White House said President Donald Trump will cut short his visit with the Group of Seven economic powers in Canada this weekend, announcing that he would to leave the summit early after sparring with other world leaders on the issue of trade.
By leaving after a session on women's empowerment on Saturday morning, Trump will skip meetings on climate change, energy policy and oceans.
It’s no surprise he’s skipping the session on climate change and energy policy. He’d be laughed right out of the room. On camera, at that.
And that’s the real reason for this tantrum. The last thing Trump wants is the optics of being lectured by someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.
“Prime Minister Trudeau is being so indignant, bringing up the relationship that the U.S. and Canada had over the many years and all sorts of other things,” Trump posted. “But he doesn’t bring up the fact that they charge us up to 300% on dairy — hurting our Farmers, killing our Agriculture!”
Assuming Canada was actually “killing our agriculture” with its duties on some dairy products, the G-7 would provide the ideal forum to iron out that dispute. But someone who only communicates through didactic Tweets is constitutionally incapable of the give-and-take negotiation process (the “all sorts of other things”) that effective trade policy demands. Instead, an incompetent like Trump chooses the easy way out--to play a game of “chicken” with tariffs that will ultimately benefit no one, and likely only end up hurting American farmers and businesses. But at least he doesn’t have to actually negotiate.
Because America now lacks a leader who possesses even the most basic skills of negotiation, as French President Emmanuel Macron pointed out, the embarrassment in the White House has transformed our country into the United States of Irrelevancy:
Macron suggested earlier Thursday that the U.S. could be excluded from the group’s agreements.
“The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be,” Macron posted on Twitter. “Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force.”
“No leader is eternal,” Macron wrote earlier.
Trump will now prepare for his trip to Singapore where he plans to cave to a murderous dictator’s every whim.
Update: By way of explanation for his actions, it appears Trump’s primary concern is advancing Russia's trade policy, as opposed to our own.
“Russia should be in this meeting,” Trump told reporters in Washington. “Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting."
“Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run, and in the G-7 which used to be the G-8, they threw Russia out,” he said. “They should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”