Trump yanks support for G7 statement, tweets Trudeau is dishonest

Meek, mild and dishonest: Trump lashes out at Trudeau after PM contradicts him in public

QUEBEC CITY—U.S. President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell after the G7 summit ended, essentially calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a liar who made “false statements” about Canada-U.S. trade.

The president tweeted: “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!”

Trump began by contradicting Trudeau’s announcement earlier Saturday that G7 countries had agreed to an “ambitious” joint communique, tweeting that Trudeau’s “false statements” at his press conference prompted him to instruct U.S. officials “not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!”
Trump’s reversal on the joint statement and declaration that he will proceed with an investigation and possible 25 per cent tariffs on automobile imports — despite all that he heard in Charlevoix over the past 24 hours — was a stunning move.

This Trump G7 Press Conference In Quebec Was Something Else

Trudeau had closed the G7 summit just two hours earlier, calling it a success because the seven leaders had set aside sharp differences on tariffs and come to a consensus to support a vague statement endorsing “a rules-based international order” and “free, fair and mutually beneficial trade and investment.”

“Canadians are polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” Trudeau said, insisting that while Trump “will continue to say what he says at various occasions,” G7 leaders still managed to make progress on a “broad range” of issues.
But Trump tweeted he was now pulling out of the joint communiqué after all, although it was not entirely clear which of Trudeau’s statements he deemed “false.”

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!
Trump added an even further personal attack, tweeting: “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!”

In fact, Trump’s tweets appear to prove Trudeau’s point — that American tariffs are punitive measures and do not deal with actual national security concerns. Trump appears focused on Canada’s milk more than any threat to national security.

The Canadian prime minister, who was in meetings with UN and other leaders Saturday night, had little to say in response.

US President Donald Trump has launched a ferocious attack on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling his behaviour during G7 meetings “meek and mild” and accusing him of issuing “false statements” at his closing press conference.”
Trudeau’s spokesman, Cameron Ahmad, released a statement from Trudeau, saying: “We are focused on everything we accomplished here at the G7 summit. The Prime Minister said nothing he hasn’t said before — both in public, and in private conversations with the President.”

In reality, Trump has previously stated that the tariffs imposed on May 31 on Canadian steel and aluminum are because producers here pose a national security threat to the United States, something Trudeau has repeatedly called absurd.
In fact, Trump had earlier insisted their personal relationship remained good — Trump rated it “a 10” — but their news conferences, and now the incredibly personal shot at Trudeau, spoke volumes.

The Twitter tirade came just hours after Trudeau publicly contradicted several sweeping assertions made by Trump earlier in the day on issues including NAFTA renegotiations and the presidents contentious demand for a sunset clause in the deal.
Trump told reporters in the morning that he would not reverse steel and aluminum tariffs that hit Canada and all other G7 members. The U.S. president insisted on the need to blow up Canada’s dairy quota system that levies tariffs on American farmers after a foreign import quota is reached, and declared that a new North American free trade pact “will have a sunset clause.”

He said a five-year expiry, or a longer term to accommodate concerns of business investment cycles, were the two options.

Trudeau said he told the U.S. president that Canada will retaliate with $16 billion in countermeasures against U.S. products starting July 1 if he doesn’t lift the tariffs.

“It is something that absolutely we will do,” Trudeau added. He said he told Trump that Canadians are polite and reasonable, “but we also will not be pushed around.”

Talk at the two-day summit had been dominated by discussion of Trump’s move to impose punitive tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the EU — a move French President Emmanual Macron has called “illegal and a mistake” under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
Trudeau said he made the case “directly” to Trump that Canadian steel and aluminum was not a national security threat to America, and that Canadians found it an “insulting” position for Trump to take.

“A trade deal with a sunset clause is not a trade deal and so therefore we will not accept a sunset clause of five, 10, whatever duration is proposed by the President,” Trudeau told reporters.

Based on Justins false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!
Trump had agreed to the vague language on trade in the consensus document, the result of late-night discussions with the other G7 leaders in a lounge at the leaders’ hotel after an outdoor cultural show.

Those talks continued between Trump’s and Trudeau’s top aides until about 2:30 in the morning, and were not finalized until just before Trump held his own closing news conference Friday morning.

Trump said Saturday that the U.S. would win any trade war, vowing to ramp up combative trade actions — even against some of his country’s closest allies — or curtail trade altogether if partners cannot agree to more favourable terms for America.
At his news conference, it was Trump who surprised his allies, lobbing threats of more sanctions against other countries, saying that unless they removed all tariffs, non-tariff barriers and all subsidies, he would cut trading ties with them.

“The gig is up,” Trump told reporters before skipping two sessions on climate change and oceans protection and heading to the airport.

“They have no choice. If it’s not going to change, we’re not going to trade with them.”

By the end of the day, it was clearer than ever that despite all their talk, the two sides remain deadlocked on key issues at the NAFTA talks, and there is no real path forward for what the next steps toward seriously resolving these issues should be.

“I dont blame other leaders for that. I blame our past leaders. There is no reason that this shouldve happened … In fact, I congratulate the leaders of other countries for so crazily being able to make these trade deals that were so good for their countries and so bad for the United States.”
Furthermore, Trump’s threat to extend tariffs to autos would be devastating to the Canadian and American industries, which insist they are an integrated supply chain.

Before the summit, Trump has been attacking Canadas trade politics on Twitter. He also called Trudeau “indignant” due to the Canadian leaders refusal to give in to Trumps demands to do away with the countrys supply management system.

At a closing news conference, the Canadian prime minister declared the summit had been a success because despite “frank disagreements” all seven leaders supported the communiqué on trade and other issues, as well as committing to significant financial measures to empower women and girls through education, training and business development.

Trump repeated his assertion that the United States has been taken advantage of for decades, citing Canadas tariffs on milk to protect its dairy farmers. He also helpfully reminded the world of the meaning of the word “reciprocal.”
But the U.S. remained an outlier on climate change and did not sign onto two key commitments in that regard, and Japan joined the Americans in declining to sign a plastics charter.

Hes gonna cover every issue Trumps next stop after the G7 summit is to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore. A reporter began to ask the president, “Will you raise the issue of the gulags with Kim Jong Un … “
The final communiqué had vague endorsements of the importance of working to ensure a “clean environment, clean air and clean water.”

“They understand that. They know it. When Im telling them, theyre smiling at me. You know, its like the gig is up … [The European Union] cant believe they got away with it. Canada cant believe they got away with it.
The United States stood alone in refusing to sign the joint statement on climate change which restated the importance of the Paris accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement.

But Trump got unanimous support for his efforts on his coming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Donald Trumps G7 press conference in La Malbaie, Que. on Saturday was certainly interesting, to say the least. The U.S. president delivered a rambling statement before taking questions from journalists.
Trump said he’ll know very soon whether he will like the man, and whether he is serious about reaching an agreement with him.

“I think within the first minute I’ll know. Just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do.”

Tell your fake friends A reporter asked Trump about his relationships with the other countries in the G7 and whether he felt like alliances were shifting.

The G7 leaders set aside their differences after an evening fireside cultural show and worked into the evening to find common language they could agree on given the widening gulf with the U.S.

“I would say that the level of relationship is a 10. We have a great relationship. Angela and Emmanuel and Justin. I would say the relationship is a 10.”
QUEBEC CITY—U.S. President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell after the G7 summit ended, essentially calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a liar who made “false statements” about Canada-U.S. trade.

In November, I spent a few hours in the man cave of billionaire Sergei Polonsky, one of several fake presidential candidates in the recent Russian elections. The man cave was actually a skybox, with 360-degree views of Moscow and model airplanes and a Burmese python and a banya and two yapping, Mexican hairless dogs, whom the billionaire called his babies, and a library of rare, pre-revolutionary books about sex and art and death, and an army of dudes—mostly twentysomething, bearded, trendy—who made lattes and posted stuff. Polonsky was being interviewed by another fake presidential candidate, Ksenia Sobchak, a former reality-television star who once starred in a show called The Blonde in Chocolate. (Sobchaks campaign later posted the interview on her YouTube channel.) After the interview, I rode with Sobchak in the back of her Audi and asked her questions about Russia, Vladimir Putin, her favorite American president (Ronald Reagan), her favorite British prime minister (Margaret Thatcher), and her favorite novel, The Brothers Karamazov. (Fyodor Dostoevsky polls well in Russia.) Eventually, I mentioned Donald Trump, and Sobchak, who will probably run for president again, in 2024, when Putin is term-limited, said, In the end, believe me, there will be no friendship between Trump and Putin. Sobchak knows Putin. Her father, Anatoly Sobchak, was the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg and Putin’s one-time mentor. Putin cried at her father’s funeral, and even though she’s critical of the Russian president, no one thinks she would have run against him had the Kremlin not supported it. In the end, Sobchak said, they will split up in the most disastrous way.

The president tweeted: “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!”

A bipartisan group of senators responded by demanding that State and Defense explain the delay. We are particularly concerned that the apparent lack of urgency in transferring authorized funds from the Department of Defense to the Global Engagement Center has left the Center ill-equipped to carry out its mandate, the lawmakers wrote.

The Department of State requested these funds from the Department of Defense in August 2017, and Congress authorized these funds because we see this mechanism as a critical component of a government-wide response to Russian malign influence.

But the letter appears to have fallen down a Kafka-esque rabbit hole. With the 2018 midterm elections fast approaching, a Defense Department spokesperson told me Friday that the G.E.C. is no closer to receiving the funding than it was in the beginning of March. A senior State Department official pushed back, saying the Pentagon had already initiated the process to transfer the funds. But the Pentagon official put the onus on Congress. The Department of Defense cannot initiate a transfer of funds until a DoDs fiscal year 2018 appropriations bill is passed that includes funding for the G.E.C. and applicable congressional notification procedures are completed, they told me.

Steve Goldstein, who served as undersecretary for public diplomacy until he was fired alongside Tillerson last month, told me that while Congress had authorized a transfer of up to $60 million under the National Defense Authorization Act, it never appropriated the funds. That is a really key point, he said.

Trump’s reversal on the joint statement and declaration that he will proceed with an investigation and possible 25 per cent tariffs on automobile imports — despite all that he heard in Charlevoix over the past 24 hours — was a stunning move.

The problem is that the secretary wasnt going to wrap his head around this issue anytime soon, in the sense of I dont even think he knew what the G.E.C. was until summer, and even then I would be surprised if he really knew, one current State Department staffer told me. When Tillerson did acknowledge the G.E.C., the secretary and his top aides were perceived to be openly hostile toward its mission.

In August, Politico reported that R.C. Hammond, who served as the State Departments head of communications until December of last year, had urged Tillerson not to spend nearly $80 million that had been earmarked for the G.E.C. by Congress, including about $60 million from the Defense Department, because the effort would upset Moscow.

(Hammond dismissed this narrative.) And while insiders have praised acting coordinator Daniel Kimmage, telling me that there is no better person to lead the effort than the civil service officer—who is fluent in both Russian and Arabic, among other languages—one source said he never gained the trust of the Trump partisans he reported to. He specifically was seen as an Obama person, the current State Department staffer said, noting that Kimmage was appointed to the post by a former John Kerry loyalist. So people were suspicious.

That also didnt help. (A State Department spokesperson said that Kimmage may have participated in healthy debates with some members of Tillersons staff, but that there was no partisan political element to the back-and-forth.)

Trudeau had closed the G7 summit just two hours earlier, calling it a success because the seven leaders had set aside sharp differences on tariffs and come to a consensus to support a vague statement endorsing “a rules-based international order” and “free, fair and mutually beneficial trade and investment.”

From the beginning, Ivanka and Jared were honest with their detail about the possibility that they would move to Washington after the election. Don Jr.—Mountaineer—was less comfortable with the idea of protection. For starters, he was generally more private than his sister.

He went to his second home in the Catskills to fish and build bonfires and roam around on A.T.V.s with his kids most weekends, and took off for days-long hunting trips in the most remote parts of the Canadian bush, looking for moose, and 10-day fishing trips in Alaska. He enjoyed the anonymity provided to him in this world, which was now ending. It didnt help, either, that he and his wife, Vanessa, had five kids living in New York City, which meant that she had to manage essentially six different details—one for her and her husband, and one for each of her children.

Her phone frequently lit up with texts and calls from agents, telling her one kid was a few minutes late to meet them on their designated street corner; asking if they would be on the north or south side of the street, or what time she planned to leave the house for their drive upstate for the weekend, or who was staying late at school that afternoon. It is literally overwhelming, a former Secret Service agent explained. Trying to manage all that with seasoned staff would be mind-numbing. To have someone whos never done it before try and juggle all of that? Well, it would just be horrific. (Vanessa filed for divorce in March.)
But Trump tweeted he was now pulling out of the joint communiqué after all, although it was not entirely clear which of Trudeau’s statements he deemed “false.”

There is no doubt that the geyser of leaks emanating from Donald Trumps White House—whatever the motivation behind it—has made the daily business of politics almost impossible. Policy initiatives have been cratered before they launched; West Wing careers have been killed; venerated journalistic institutions have been reduced to Us Weekly on the Potomac.

And yet every attempt to plug the spigot has been futile. Just one month after Trump took office, his then press secretary, Sean Spicer, demanded that his staffers turn over their phones to White House lawyers for a phone check. (The incident leaked to the press.)

A year later, Chief of Staff John Kelly resorted to more drastic measures, banning the use of personal cell phones in the West Wing. (The incident leaked to the press.) Months later—despite numerous firings, public shamings, and mounting paranoia over the Robert Mueller investigation—the situation remains much the same, leaving some to wonder if the problem isnt the staffers, but the culture, or even the boss himself. Bad managers almost always breed an unhappy workplace, which ultimately results in pervasive leaking, a former White House official told Axios.

And there has been plenty of all those things inside this White House. Some people use leaking to settle personal scores, or even worse to attack the president, but for me it was always to make a point about something that I felt was being unjustly ignored by others.

Trump added an even further personal attack, tweeting: “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!”

In fact, Trump’s tweets appear to prove Trudeau’s point — that American tariffs are punitive measures and do not deal with actual national security concerns. Trump appears focused on Canada’s milk more than any threat to national security.

Growing up in a hardscrabble housing block in St. Petersburg, Putin is believed to have taken up judo after he kept getting in fights with bigger kids. He still picks fights with stronger rivals today—NATO and the United States chief among them—and the former K.G.B. operative seems to try to keep President Barack Obama off-balance. When the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by pro-Western protesters in 2014, Putin quietly deployed masked, unmarked troops to the Crimean peninsula, seized control, and forced the region to hold a referendum declaring Crimea independent. Within two months, a large portion of the country had been annexed by the Russian Federation.

The West was stunned again when Putin repeated his shadow war in Eastern Ukraine, engineering a separatist rebellion that was actually backed by thousands of undeclared Russian forces.
Despite facing punishing U.S.-led sanctions for his repeated military incursions into Europe,

Putin challenged Obama a third time by launching a successful military intervention in 2015 on behalf of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, cooperating with Iranian forces to wipe out the U.S.-backed opposition under the guise of driving back ISIS.

All the while, Putin has sheltered N.S.A. whistle-blower Edward Snowden, thumbing his nose at the White House by portraying himself as a defender of civil liberties.
The Canadian prime minister, who was in meetings with UN and other leaders Saturday night, had little to say in response.

In less than 24 hours, Donald Trump is scheduled to land in Charlevoix, Quebec, for the annual G7 Summit. And thanks to his ill-considered, self-defeating, pointlessly belligerent trade policies, no one is particularly excited to see him. France and Germany have said they may not sign the joint statement that typically concludes these gatherings, filling all parties with the warm glow of global cooperation. Emmanuel Macron is tweeting warning shots.

(The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which . . . is now a true international force, he fired off Thursday afternoon.)

Justin Trudeau has called Trumps tariffs laughable and said that his unacceptable actions are going to harm his own citizens. Angela Merkel has vowed to take Trump to task on trade and Iran.

Not helping matters is the fact that rather than use the meeting to ease tensions and engage in diplomacy that might actually benefit the U.S., the president is reportedly itching for a fight, and is already threatening to behave in the sort of manner that, if he were at a restaurant, would result in the manager approaching his table and telling him, Sir, were going to need to ask you to leave. That is, if he shows up at all.

Trudeau’s spokesman, Cameron Ahmad, released a statement from Trudeau, saying: “We are focused on everything we accomplished here at the G7 summit. The Prime Minister said nothing he hasn’t said before — both in public, and in private conversations with the President.”

In fact, Trump had earlier insisted their personal relationship remained good — Trump rated it “a 10” — but their news conferences, and now the incredibly personal shot at Trudeau, spoke volumes.

In less than 24 hours, Donald Trump is scheduled to land in Charlevoix, Quebec, for the annual G7 Summit. And thanks to his ill-considered, self-defeating, pointlessly belligerent trade policies, no one is particularly excited to see him.

France and Germany have said they may not sign the joint statement that typically concludes these gatherings, filling all parties with the warm glow of global cooperation. Emmanuel Macron is tweeting warning shots.

(The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which . . . is now a true international force, he fired off Thursday afternoon.) Justin Trudeau has called Trumps tariffs laughable and said that his unacceptable actions are going to harm his own citizens. Angela Merkel has vowed to take Trump to task on trade and Iran. Not helping matters is the fact that rather than use the meeting to ease tensions and engage in diplomacy that might actually benefit the U.S., the president is reportedly itching for a fight, and is already threatening to behave in the sort of manner that, if he were at a restaurant, would result in the manager approaching his table and telling him, Sir, were going to need to ask you to leave. That is, if he shows up at all.

Trump told reporters in the morning that he would not reverse steel and aluminum tariffs that hit Canada and all other G7 members. The U.S. president insisted on the need to blow up Canada’s dairy quota system that levies tariffs on American farmers after a foreign import quota is reached, and declared that a new North American free trade pact “will have a sunset clause.”

He said a five-year expiry, or a longer term to accommodate concerns of business investment cycles, were the two options.

Trudeau said he told the U.S. president that Canada will retaliate with $16 billion in countermeasures against U.S. products starting July 1 if he doesn’t lift the tariffs.

“It is something that absolutely we will do,” Trudeau added. He said he told Trump that Canadians are polite and reasonable, “but we also will not be pushed around.”

Trudeau said he made the case “directly” to Trump that Canadian steel and aluminum was not a national security threat to America, and that Canadians found it an “insulting” position for Trump to take.

“A trade deal with a sunset clause is not a trade deal and so therefore we will not accept a sunset clause of five, 10, whatever duration is proposed by the President,” Trudeau told reporters.

Trump had agreed to the vague language on trade in the consensus document, the result of late-night discussions with the other G7 leaders in a lounge at the leaders’ hotel after an outdoor cultural show.

Those talks continued between Trump’s and Trudeau’s top aides until about 2:30 in the morning, and were not finalized until just before Trump held his own closing news conference Friday morning.

At his news conference, it was Trump who surprised his allies, lobbing threats of more sanctions against other countries, saying that unless they removed all tariffs, non-tariff barriers and all subsidies, he would cut trading ties with them.

“The gig is up,” Trump told reporters before skipping two sessions on climate change and oceans protection and heading to the airport.

“They have no choice. If it’s not going to change, we’re not going to trade with them.”

By the end of the day, it was clearer than ever that despite all their talk, the two sides remain deadlocked on key issues at the NAFTA talks, and there is no real path forward for what the next steps toward seriously resolving these issues should be.

Furthermore, Trump’s threat to extend tariffs to autos would be devastating to the Canadian and American industries, which insist they are an integrated supply chain.

At a closing news conference, the Canadian prime minister declared the summit had been a success because despite “frank disagreements” all seven leaders supported the communiqué on trade and other issues, as well as committing to significant financial measures to empower women and girls through education, training and business development.

But the U.S. remained an outlier on climate change and did not sign onto two key commitments in that regard, and Japan joined the Americans in declining to sign a plastics charter.

The final communiqué had vague endorsements of the importance of working to ensure a “clean environment, clean air and clean water.”

The United States stood alone in refusing to sign the joint statement on climate change which restated the importance of the Paris accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement.

But Trump got unanimous support for his efforts on his coming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump said he’ll know very soon whether he will like the man, and whether he is serious about reaching an agreement with him.

“I think within the first minute I’ll know. Just my touch, my feel. That’s what I do.”

The G7 leaders set aside their differences after an evening fireside cultural show and worked into the evening to find common language they could agree on given the widening gulf with the U.S.

Source:canadianews.org/montreal