The allies are giving the American President a piece of their mind.
After Trump bucked his party and most economists by announcing a new raft of tariffs on aluminum and steel produced by US allies in Europe, Canada and Mexico with the stated purpose of improving US security, leaders of those countries are letting loose in public, and with the President on the other end of the line.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sounded angry and jilted in interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It’s a far cry from the previous efforts by the young liberal to charm Trump and his many outings with Ivanka Trump. The gloves are off, diplomatically speaking.
“The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable,” said Trudeau, speaking to the American political audience in a very direct way and pointing out the longtime connection of the US and Canadian militaries.
Asked by Chuck Todd what Trump wants, Trudeau seemed to honestly say, “I don’t know.” But he did promise tit-for-tat tariffs on US goods and to up the ante with new tariffs on finished consumer goods.
Mexico is preparing its response and so is the EU.
European leaders aren’t hiding their anger either.
French President Emmanuel Macron had tried to good-cop Trump, developing a bro-ship with the unpredictable American leader and trying to influence him in favor of international agreements. That didn’t work on the Iran deal.
And when the two spoke about trade and immigration recently, the bromance seemed to be over.
“Just bad. It was terrible,” one source told CNN in a report by Michelle Kosinski and Maegan Vazquez. “Macron thought he would be able to speak his mind, based on the relationship. But Trump can’t handle being criticized like that.”
Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, planned to express her displeasure at the “unjustified and deeply disappointing” tariffs, according to Downing Street.
The effort has not not swayed Trump, according to the White House.
“The President feels very confident in his decision,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said during a short briefing with reporters, “and will continue to make sure that the unfair trade practices that have gone on for decades do not continue and that he’s protecting the interests of American workers and American businesses.”
The tariffs, however, have put Trump at odds with normal US allies like Canada and Mexico – and also complicate separate but related negotiations on NAFTA.
International allies are being unusually direct with Trump and so are Republicans. Leaders in the House and Senate have criticized Trump’s move, although it is not at all clear there’s support in Congress for any sort of revolt.
None of this should be a surprise at this point in the Trump presidency. On foreign affairs, he’s been pulling out of international deals and upsetting the decades of US foreign policy from his first days in office, when he withdrew the US from a massive trade deal with Pacific nations (they’ve moved on without the US), and held combative conversations with leaders from Mexico and Australia.
The combination of Trump’s decision to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal, his dogged pursuit of a face-to-face meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, his separate high-stakes game of tariff escalation (or maybe a trade deal) with China and the confusing US relationship with Russia, makes finding a specific message out of Trump’s foreign policy a fraught exercise.