This week, if you hadn’t noticed, U.S. President Donald Trump went to Canada for the annual G7 summit of world leaders where he continued on with the aggressiveness in the field of trade policy that he has long established as the preferred method of operation for his administration. Just recently, in line with that aggression, he imposed tariffs on imported goods from an array of countries allied with us around the world, including members of the G7.
On Saturday, upon his departure from the G7 summit, he sought to bolster his aggressive position when it comes to trade policy with a series of Twitter posts.
He wrote, in part:
‘Great meetings and relationships with the six Country Leaders especially since they know I cannot allow them to apply large Tariffs and strong barriers to U.S.A. Trade. They fully understand where I am coming from. After many decades, fair and reciprocal Trade will happen!’
The irony that again sticks out here is that throughout the whole ordeal of Trump’s aggression targeting our allies around the world, he has insisted that everything is getting along just fine and will come shortly to a nice conclusion that will benefit all parties involved.
Meanwhile, in the real world, nations around the world have been moving to impose retaliatory tariffs while at the same time bringing complaints before the World Trade Organization over the tariffs Trump imposed. American farmers — the very group Trump has claimed to be aiming to stick up for — face the threats of looming trade wars dragging down their businesses even further.
Even still, all we get from Trump are tweets repeating lines of argument he’s used in the past meant to reassure the U.S. and the world that everything is going to be just fine. He has explicitly downplayed the threats of trade wars in the past.
Going on from the G7 summit that Trump left Saturday in Canada, he will be going to Singapore to meet with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
That meeting was at one point said to be cancelled by the Trump administration, but it’s now back on, and considering the volatility of both world leaders involved in the summit, it’s anyone’s guess how it will go.
Trump addressed the summit with the North Korean leader in addition to trade issues while writing on Twitter Saturday, saying:
‘I am on my way to Singapore where we have a chance to achieve a truly wonderful result for North Korea and the World. It will certainly be an exciting day and I know that Kim Jong-un will work very hard to do something that has rarely been done before Create peace and great prosperity for his land. I look forward to meeting him and have a feeling that this one-time opportunity will not be wasted!’
The threat that’s been posed in the past by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is grave, so something positive coming from the U.S. president’s summit with North Korea would certainly be a good thing — as it would be if we had someone other than Donald Trump as the U.S. president.
For now, though, he’s continuing his rule.
Check out Twitter’s response to him below.
Featured Image via Leon Neal/Getty Images
