DONALD Trump won the White House by making a virtue of the fact he was not a politician from the “Washington swamp”, but rather a highly successful businessman. And in office he has demonstrated all the arm-twisting, browbeating talents that allowed him to build up his eponymous empire.
His view of organizations, be they countries, institutions or corporates, is that they are all about those in charge. Trump always wants to eyeball the people with whom he is dealing. And that excruciatingly painful handshake of his, perhaps demonstrates that if his greeting can hurt so much, how much greater will be the pain if he walks away. Hence his desire to get face-to-face with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The president is obviously less good at larger meetings. He looked awkward and petulant last year at his first encounter with fellow leaders at a NATO gathering and rudely shoved aside Montenegro’s premier for a better position in a photo call.
By the time Trump traveled to the G7 summit in Quebec Canada this June he clearly believed he had the measure of his counterparts, just as they appeared united in their wariness, if not downright disdain for the president who had torn up the rulebook of polite summitry. He spoke his mind rather than cribbing from his briefing papers, which he is said to abhor anyway. One picture from Quebec went viral showing a standing German Chancellor Angela Merkel leaning on a table with clenched fists glaring down at a seated and apparently deeply-unimpressed Trump, arms folded dismissively across his chest. Behind Merkel were ranged other G7 leaders including Japan’s Shinzo Abe, none of whom looked particularly happy.
But the US president’s wrath in Canada was mostly directed at his host, premier Justin Trudeau who had been outspoken in his criticism of Trump’s “America First” battle cry and condemned what he saw as the President’s illiberal social policies and well as his attack on international free trade.
One of Trump’s 11 key pieces of advice in his best-selling book “The Art of The Deal” was “fight back”. And that is what he did this week when he unilaterally made a new tariff deal with Mexico which cuts right across the existing free-trade NAFTA agreement that includes Canada. Just to rub his point in, the president gave the Canadian premier until this Friday to fall in line and accept the new restrictions on doing business with the United States, by far its largest trading partner.
Trudeau is unlikely to cave because he is expecting the US Congress to intervene. It passed the original NAFTA deal and it would need to agree to any changes. Nevertheless, the way in which the outgoing Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto signed up to Trump’s new rules, which have reportedly been endorsed by his successor Andres Obrador who takes office in two months, will make a Congressional challenge more difficult, especially as the US November mid-term elections are looming.
For all his manifold troubles Donald Trump, the businessman president is ploughing on in his own inimitable style. The liberal establishment, which abhors the man Americans elected to lead them, will be hoping Republicans will be humiliated this November but must also be dreading a second unpleasant electoral surprise.
