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President Donald who…………??

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: July 06, 2017, 11:16:46 pm »


from The Washington Post....

At G-20 summit, it looks more and more like Trump against the world

While President Trump threatens to pull back on global trade, traditional U.S. allies
are trying to work around the United States instead of looking to it for leadership.


By DAMIAN PALETTA and ANA SWANSON | 11:23AM EDT - Wednesday, July 05, 2017

From left to right, European Council President Donald Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walk after a family photo during the G-7 Summit in Taormina, Sicily, Italy, May 26th, 2017. — Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.
From left to right, European Council President Donald Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. President Donald Trump,
French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walk after a family photo during the G-7 Summit
in Taormina, Sicily, Italy, May 26th, 2017. — Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.


PRESIDENT TRUMP and key global leaders are on a collision course ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Germany this week, with Trump's unapologetic “America First” mantra on trade and climate change running into emboldened, and increasingly united, opposition overseas.

Trump reiterated his threats on Wednesday to pull the United States back from existing trade deals, arguing they were against the national interest. As Trump threatens to retreat from global trade, other world powers are exploring new economic ties.

The European Union and Japan are expected on Thursday to announce plans for a major new free trade agreement. The E.U.-Japanese deal, which has only been negotiated in broad terms thus far, would lower barriers to exports of cars flowing in both directions, as well as reduce Japanese barriers to imports of trains and agricultural products, including cheese and chocolate, according to media reports. It would create a free trade area similar in size to North America, which is linked by the 1994 NAFTA agreement.

If completed, the E.U.-Japan trade deal would be a sign of other top economies adjusting to a new world order in which they attempt to work around the United States instead of looking to it for direction on building global trade. Trump, with support from Congress, already ended an effort for the United States to reach a trade agreement with Japan and other Asian countries, and he has threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and from a separate trade agreement with South Korea.

Amid strengthening overseas opposition, Trump faces one of the most consequential economic decisions of his tenure so far, as he considers imposing new restrictions on steel imports to protect U.S. producers — a move vociferously opposed by Germany and other U.S. allies. The Commerce Department was close to recommending new restrictions, but other top Trump advisers warned it could lead to major economic fallout. Now the decision is hanging over both the administration and the summit of global leaders.

Trump's advisers plan to push other countries at the G-20 to agree to concrete steps that would crack down on the way China exports steel, people briefed on the planning said, and if Trump is successful in this effort it could buttress his willingness to challenge other countries on a range of issues. But if the attempt backfires and numerous countries reject the U.S. push, it could further isolate the country.

The divergent trade approaches have set up the G-20 as a potential crossroads for the international economic order. Trump is attempting to leverage the United States' economic power to negotiate new deals in the country's favor, while foreign leaders appear increasingly ready to bypass the United States in favor of stronger ties elsewhere.

“There was a question mark there, as to whether or not the E.U. would be able to continue signing free trade agreements in the future,” said André Sapir, an international trade expert and a former economic adviser to the European Union's Director General for Economic and Financial Affairs. “This indeed demonstrates that the E.U. is able to do that.”

“Going into the G-20, it's demonstrating that indeed the E.U. and Japan want to continue to have a liberal trade agenda and show that there are other countries able to pursue this agenda without the United States,” Sapir said.

There are also signs that other nations are willing to challenge Trump more directly. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces elections in September in a country where Trump is deeply unpopular, said she would press Trump about his trade threats as well as his recent decision to withdraw from the 2016 Paris climate agreement that aimed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In advance of the meeting, Merkel and Trump discussed “global steel overcapacity” in a phone call on Monday, something that could become the top trade issue at the summit. Germany is a large exporter of steel and officials there worry they could be caught in any U.S. crackdown.

“There has been no love lost between Germany and Trump from the beginning, but now Chancellor Merkel is operating in campaign mode where all the numbers show that President Trump is deeply disliked,” said Michal Baranowski, director of the Warsaw office for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. “The concern is certainly very high about protectionist language and potentially protectionist ideas coming from the Trump administration.”

“It is important for us to wave the flag of free trade in response to global moves toward protectionism by quickly concluding the free trade agreement with Europe,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday, according to Reuters, as he touted the potential Japan-E. U. trade pact.

Trump appeared ready for a scrap ahead of the meeting. “The United States made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history. Why should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?” he wrote in a Wednesday morning Twitter post. That followed a Monday post in which Trump implied he might soon take action on steel, writing “Don't like steel & aluminum dumping!”

U.S. officials have accused China — not Germany and Canada — of “dumping” excess steel on global markets in a way that drives down prices. Because China is a G-20 country, Trump could try — for the first time — to directly challenge Chinese leader Xi Jinping in person at the Hamburg meeting. The United States imports very little steel from China, but Trump administration officials say the way China produces and exports steel still hurts the U.S. steel industry because it sells it at low prices to other countries, driving down prices.

China now makes more than half of the world's steel. Some of that steel goes to feed the factories, roads and skyscrapers that have cropped up around the country as China's economy has grown in past decades.

But U.S. companies say that the Chinese steel boom is also due to unfair government subsidies and state ownership that protects steel mills from market forces and causes them to produce much more steel than the world needs. Much of this glut of Chinese steel ends up in overseas markets, lowering the global steel price to a point where foreign companies can't profitably compete. In 2015, China produced 10 times as much crude steel as the United States.

“The United States stands firm against all unfair trading practices, including massive distortions in the global steel market and other nonmarket practices that harm U.S. workers,” White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said. “We ask the G-20 economies to join us in this effort and to take concrete actions to solve these problems.”

U.S.-China relations are further complicated by international tensions over North Korea, after dictator Kim Jong Un's regime — to broad international condemnation — conducted a military exercise that seemed designed to demonstrate the increased range of its missile technology.

Trump took a combative posture with China ahead of the meeting, ripping the country for allegedly increasing its trade with North Korea. “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 percent in the first quarter. So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!” Trump wrote in another Wednesday morning Twitter missive.

Trump had taken a more conciliatory approach with China in recent months, backing away from a threat to label Beijing a currency manipulator and saying he thought both countries could work closely together on a range of issues. But relations appear to have soured in recent weeks, and his Wednesday accusation that China has enabled North Korea's missile programs marks a low point between his administration and Xi.

A number of trade experts said it remains unclear whether Trump is simply threatening tariffs as a way to lure other countries to offer him concessions, or if he will follow through on new restrictions, rebuffing advice from many in his Cabinet. He has taken steps to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, and he has also said he wants a new trade deal with South Korea. But so far those efforts are only in initial stages. Global leaders have seen an opening in persuading Trump to change course, as he made a last-minute decision to renegotiate — rather than withdraw — from NAFTA after intense pressure from Canada and Mexico.

“There's a big difference between being unpredictable with your adversaries and being erratic with your friends and allies,” said Daniel Price, former international economic affairs adviser to President George W. Bush, who helped organize the first G-20 summit in 2008.

Still, Merkel has emerged as one of the global leaders most willing to challenge Trump's approach.

“Those who think that the problems of this world can be solved with isolationism or protectionism are terribly wrong,” she told the German parliament last week.

Trump and some of his advisers have chided Merkel over the fact that Germany exports far more goods more to the U.S. than the U.S. exports to Germany — $64 billion worth of cars, machinery and other goods in 2016.

Many trade experts believe the unbalanced trade is due in large part to Germany's use of a shared currency with the rest of the euro zone, which ends up making the euro cheaper than a strong economy like Germany would otherwise have. German officials have tried to explain this dynamic to Trump and his advisers for months, but Trump administration officials believe Germany could do more to boost their imports.

The Germans argue that their companies, including luxury automakers, invest heavily in the United States, employing more than 100,000 Americans.

Before his inauguration, Trump had threatened BMW with a 35 percent tariff over its plan to build a new plant in Mexico. And on his last trip to Europe, at a meeting of the Group of 7 in Italy, Trump told European leaders that the Germans were “very bad” on trade. “We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change,” Trump tweeted in late May.

Trump ran for his election by vilifying China's trade practices, and he could try to use the G-20 summit to try to isolate Beijing over the way it produces and exports steel. Trump softened his criticism of China in the early months of his term, but in recent weeks his administration has stepped up criticism of the country for human rights violations and failing to help with North Korea.

G-20 meetings, which are held once a year in a rotation of countries, typically end with a joint statement from every nation about a range of issues that can include economic policy, international assistance and security. Officials are likely to face strains as they try to cobble together the joint statement — known as the “communique” — for this meeting, because Trump could easily block any language that he feels try to box him in on his trade or climate initiatives. But Trump could also risk alienating the White House from foreign leaders who have often looked to the U.S. for leadership on all of these issues, particularly as he is seeking more influence in global security and counterterrorism efforts.

Merkel is expected to also serve as Trump's lead antagonist on climate issues, following his June announcement that he was beginning the process of withdrawing from the Paris agreement. The announcement divided White House officials, some of whom opposed the move, and it was condemned by numerous world leaders, including those in China, Canada and the United Kingdom.

But since then, top White House officials have defended Trump's decision, saying it represents his focus on helping protect U.S. jobs and not succumbing to greenhouse gas targets that could lead to regulations.

“He cares very much about the climate,” Cohn said, speaking of Trump. “He cares about the environment. But he has to enter into a deal that's fair for the American people, the American workers. He's done everything he's done based on job creation, economic growth in the United States.”

This is a message Trump and his advisers are expected to make again at the G-20 meeting in the coming days when they are challenged by other leaders.

Trump leaves for the G-20 meeting on Wednesday and will first stop in Poland.


James McAuley contributed reporting from Paris.

• Damian Paletta reports on White House economic policy for The Washington Post He also covers intelligence and national security for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

• Ana Swanson covers the economy, trade and the Federal Reserve for The Washington Post.

__________________________________________________________________________

More on this topic:

 • VIDEO: Protesters flock to Hamburg ahead of G-20 summit

 • VIDEO: This is what Putin hopes to get out of Trump at the G20 meeting

 • Washington Post EDITORIAL: The G-20 should put climate change at the top of its list

 • Thousands protest in German city of Hamburg before G20

 • The places in America most exposed to a trade war

 • Trump promised to make trade fair again. Is he succeeding?

 • Trump and EU offer starkly different trade visions at G-20


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/05/at-g-20-meeting-it-looks-more-and-more-like-trump-against-the-world
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Caprox
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« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2017, 11:59:45 pm »

LOL!

In that photo, it appears that Macron 'Le Cuck' is about to touch Frau Merkel's breast!

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2017, 12:02:34 am »


from The Washington Post....

World leaders signal free-trade plans — whether Trump joins or not

Trump is threatening to pull the U.S. out of existing trade agreements.
Other leaders are announcing plans to make new ones.


By DAMIAN PALETTA and ANA SWANSON | 5:56PM EDT - Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Demonstrators against the G20 Summit stand on stage wearing masks depicting from left : British Prime Minister Theresa May, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, in Hamburg, Germany on Sunday, July 2nd, 2017. — Photograph: Axel Heimken/Associated Press.
Demonstrators against the G20 Summit stand on stage wearing masks depicting from left : British Prime Minister Theresa May,
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, in Hamburg, Germany
on Sunday, July 2nd, 2017. — Photograph: Axel Heimken/Associated Press.


IN A pointed challenge to President Trump's “America first” agenda, leaders of the world's biggest economies this week are touting an approach that breaks with the past 20 years of global trade — sidestep the United States entirely.

In the days leading up to this week's Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, leaders from Germany, Japan and elsewhere are discussing new free-trade agreements that exclude U.S. automakers and manufacturers. Their leaders are vigorously pushing back against Trump's threat of new U.S. tariffs or regulations on imported steel. And many are making public comments that affirm their commitments to fashioning pacts with or without the United States.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces elections in September in a country where Trump is deeply unpopular, has been among the most outspoken and is expected to push Trump this weekend over his trade threats and his recent decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement that aimed to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“Those who think that the problems of this world can be solved with isolationism or protectionism are terribly wrong,” Merkel told the German parliament last week.

The divergent approaches have set up the G-20 as a potential crossroads for the world's new economic order. Trump is attempting to leverage the United States' economic power to negotiate deals in the country's favor, but foreign leaders appear increasingly ready to bypass Trump in favor of a global trade network that is not U.S.-centered.

“It is important for us to wave the flag of free trade in response to global moves toward protectionism by quickly concluding the free-trade agreement with Europe,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday as he touted a new potential Japan-E.U. trade pact that would lower tariffs for automobiles between Europe and Japan. If signed, the free-trade agreement would rival the size of the one created in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement lowered barriers between the United States and its neighbors.

“There was a question mark there, as to whether or not the E.U. would be able to continue signing free trade agreements in the future,” said André Sapir, an international trade expert and a former economic adviser to the European Union's director general for economic and financial affairs. “Going into the G-20, [the proposed trade pact is] demonstrating that indeed the E.U. and Japan want to continue to have a liberal trade agenda and show that there are other countries able to pursue this agenda without the United States.”

While other countries explore new economic ties, Trump is threatening to pull the United States further back.

“The United States made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history. Why should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?” he wrote in a Wednesday morning Twitter post.

As well as threatening to rip up existing agreements, the White House is also considering placing new taxes or restrictions on imported steel. Some Trump advisers say the restrictions are needed to protect the domestic steel industry from what they allege are trade practices by China, but international allies, including Germany and Canada, have opposed the new restrictions, arguing it will punish their nations' industries and raise the global price of steel.

At the G-20 summit, Trump's team plans to push countries to agree to crack down on Chinese steel exports, people briefed on the planning said.

“The United States stands firm against all unfair trading practices, including massive distortions in the global steel market and other non-market practices that harm U.S. workers,” National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said. “We ask the G-20 economies to join us in this effort and to take concrete actions to solve these problems.”

In advance of the G-20 summit, Merkel and Trump discussed “global steel overcapacity” during a phone call on Monday.

Germany is a large exporter of steel, and officials there worry they could be caught in a U.S. crackdown.

China makes more than half of the world's steel, and U.S. officials have accused it of “dumping” excess steel on global markets in a way that drives down prices. The United States imports very little steel from China, but Trump administration officials say the way China produces and exports steel still hurts the U.S. steel industry, as it sells the metal to other countries at low prices, driving global prices below a point where many U.S. firms can compete.

U.S. companies say that the Chinese steel boom is also due to unfair government subsidies and state ownership, which protects steel mills from market forces and causes them to produce much more steel than the world needs. In 2015, China produced 10 times as much crude steel as the United States.

Trump's administration is divided over whether to impose new steel trade barriers. The Commerce Department was close to recommending new restrictions, but other top Trump advisers warned it could lead to major economic fallout — including for U.S. industries.

Trump took a combative posture with China ahead of the meeting, ripping the country for its ties to North Korea at a time when dictator Kim Jong Un is developing long-range missiles and threatening U.S. allies. “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!” Trump wrote in another Wednesday morning Twitter missive.

Trump had taken a more conciliatory approach with China in recent months, backing away from a threat to label Beijing a currency manipulator and saying he thought both countries could work closely together. But relations appear to have soured in recent weeks, and his Wednesday accusation that China has enabled North Korea’s missile programs marks a low point between his administration and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

If Trump is able to use the summit to negotiate a united front against Chinese steel, he could boost the U.S. industry without straining ties with foreign allies. But the strategy could backfire if other nations reject Trump's entreaties and further isolate the United States.

Trade experts said it remains unclear whether Trump is simply threatening tariffs as a way to lure other countries to offer him concessions, or if he will follow through on new restrictions. He has taken steps to renegotiate NAFTA, and he has also said he wants a new trade deal with South Korea. But so far, those efforts are only in initial stages. Global leaders have seen an opening in persuading Trump to change course, as he made a last-minute decision to renegotiate, rather than withdraw from, NAFTA after intense pressure from Canada and Mexico.

“There's a big difference between being unpredictable with your adversaries and being erratic with your friends and allies,” said Daniel Price, former international economic affairs adviser to President George W. Bush, who helped organize the first G-20 summit in 2008.

The E.U.-Japanese deal, which has only been negotiated in broad terms thus far, would lower barriers to exports of cars flowing in both directions, as well as reduce Japanese barriers to imports of trains and agricultural products, including cheese and chocolate.

Japan was a party to the now-aborted Trans-Pacific Partnership, a broad trade arrangement negotiated under President Barack Obama that would have lowered trade barriers between the United States and many Asian countries, with the notable exception of China. But the deal faced opposition in Congress, and Trump formally ended its chances when he withdrew the United States from the deal upon taking office.

Now, the E.U.-Japan pact underscores the economic risks for the United States if the country is bypassed in global economic pacts.

“Any trade agreement that's lowering barriers between other countries ultimately hurts U.S. exporters, because they still face those tariff barriers others don't,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Trump left for the G-20 meeting on Wednesday, with a pre-meeting stop scheduled in Poland.

G-20 meetings, which are held once a year in a rotation of countries, typically end with a joint statement from every nation about a range of issues that can include economic policy, international assistance and security. Officials are likely to face strains as they try to cobble together the joint statement — known as the “communique” — for this meeting, because Trump could easily block any language he feels tries to box him in.


James McAuley contributed reporting from Paris.

• Damian Paletta reports on White House economic policy for The Washington Post He also covers intelligence and national security for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

• Ana Swanson covers the economy, trade and the Federal Reserve for The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/05/world-leaders-signal-free-trade-plans-whether-trump-joins-or-not
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2017, 12:03:52 am »


Yep....Trump is a nobody.

He can huff & puff all he likes, but the world is going to ignore him and carry on Making the World GREAT.

Fuck America....they are a has-been superpower on the wane.

And hallelujah for Donald Trump who is speeding up that process.
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #4 on: July 07, 2017, 12:38:45 am »


from The Washington Post....

Phone taps, power plays and sarcasm: What it's like to negotiate with Vladimir Putin

The Russian leader is not ‘theatrical’ like Trump, but has his own set of tricks to bully and bluster his opponents.

By DAVID NAKAMURA | 6:30PM EDT - Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Putin enters a hall at the Kremlin in Moscow to attend the presentation ceremony of the top military brass in Moscow. The president said Ukraine could regain some arms and equipment of military units in Crimea that did not switch their loyalty to Russia. — Photograph: Alexei Druzhinin/RIA-Novosti/Associated Press.
Putin enters a hall at the Kremlin in Moscow to attend the presentation ceremony of the top military brass in Moscow. The president said Ukraine
could regain some arms and equipment of military units in Crimea that did not switch their loyalty to Russia.
 — Photograph: Alexei Druzhinin/RIA-Novosti/Associated Press.


RELATIONS between Russia and Georgia were strained in 2011 when Vice President Joe Biden's motorcade rolled past the Ferrari and Maserati dealerships to Vladimir Putin's private dacha for their first meeting in a ritzy neighborhood outside Moscow.

Biden had laid the groundwork to ease tensions and made the case to Putin, then Russia's prime minister, that Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili was not seeking to provoke the Kremlin.

“I just spoke to him,” Biden declared across a large conference table.

Putin was unmoved. “We know exactly what you're saying to Saakashvili on the phone,” he shot back. Biden laughed, but Putin did not, according to a former U.S. official who recounted the exchange, which has not been previously revealed publicly. The American delegation took Putin at his word that Russian intelligence agents were listening in on their calls.

As President Trump prepares for his first face-to-face meeting this week with Putin, in Hamburg, those who have negotiated with the Russian leader caution that Trump must be ready for a shrewd, well-prepared and implacable adversary.

Putin — who reclaimed the presidency in 2012 — has outlasted three U.S. presidents, shifting his persona but never his demands in countless phone calls and summit meetings, according to interviews with former aides with firsthand knowledge of the conversations. Bill Clinton shared a dinner of spicy wild boar with him at the presidential palace. George W. Bush looked in his eyes to get “a sense of his soul”. Barack Obama pursued a “reset” of a troubled relationship.

But all three failed to forge a personal bond with Putin as bilateral relations tumbled into an ever-worsening state of affairs.


President George W. Bush, left, listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin at their joint news conference after the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in 2001 in Shanghai. — Photograph: Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse.
President George W. Bush, left, listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin at their joint news conference after the
Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in 2001 in Shanghai. — Photograph: Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse.


Enter Trump, who professed admiration for Putin during his campaign for the U.S. presidency, calling Putin a stronger leader than Obama. But their coming meeting has been tainted by an FBI investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives who allegedly meddled in the U.S. election to aid Trump.

White House officials have said there is no formal agenda for the meeting, and they were non-committal about whether the president intends to raise the election issue with Putin.

The meeting will be watched closely for the tone Trump takes with his counterpart. Jon Finer, who served as an aide to Biden in the White House and as chief of staff to John F. Kerry when Kerry was secretary of state, said it is imperative for Trump to draw “clear lines about American interests and then find common ground, if there is any. Part of why going in without an agenda is so dangerous — you could end up having the entire conversation on his topics and his terms.”

With Putin, Finer said, “there's a sense that personalities matter, but at the end of the day, he's someone who has a strong sense of what Russian interests should be, and he's not going to deviate from that.”

Those who have met Putin describe him as a direct and forceful negotiator who wields nearly total power in the Kremlin. Although he and Bush developed an initial rapport, their relations soured amid the Bush administration's war on terror and Russia's conflict in neighboring Georgia.

After their first meeting in 2001, Bush proclaimed Putin “very straightforward and trustworthy.” That assessment has since been widely ridiculed, but Thomas E. Graham, who served as Russia director at the National Security Council under Bush, said critics leave out the rest of Bush's assessment that Putin was “a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

“That turned out to be true,” Graham said. Putin “knew what he wanted; he had messages he wanted to convey.”

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, recalled Obama's first meeting with Putin in 2009, also at Putin's private residence. The Americans wanted the three-hour session, over tea, to be more than an icebreaker, viewing it as the opening bid in an “ambitious play” to reset relations.

Although Dmitry Medvedev was president and Obama met separately with him, U.S. officials thought at the time that Putin continued to wield significant influence — and later came to conclude that Putin remained in charge.

Putin was skeptical of the Americans. He told them he had tried to work with Bush, but then launched into a litany of complaints over how the United States had foiled efforts to co-operate on counterterrorism and on the folly of the Iraq invasion, McFaul recalled.

Putin, a former KGB officer, blamed the setbacks on U.S. intelligence agencies.

“He blamed the ‘deep state’ for thwarting efforts to co-operate,” McFaul said. “He went through a series of vignettes over eight years with Bush: ‘We did this, got close on this, yet it was your side that screwed it all up’.”

The Russian leader prefers smaller meetings, with fewer aides, which he thinks will result in fewer leaks, U.S. officials said. On one visit to Moscow by Kerry, there were so few officials permitted that the U.S. delegation asked ambassador John F. Tefft to serve as the official translator.


Putin rides a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia. — Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Putin rides a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia.
 — Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


That's not Putin's only power play. While Trump is known to use forceful presidential handshakes to show dominance, Putin's strategy is more subtle. He was 40 minutes late for a meeting with Obama at the G-20 Summit in Mexico in 2012 and kept Kerry waiting for three hours in Moscow in 2013.

“Our staff was really upset,” one former Obama aide recalled. “The president was like, ‘Who cares?’ It's only a dis and a power play if you allow it.”

Yet for a macho leader who has been photographed riding a horse shirtless and drilling for oil, Putin's demeanor in person is remarkably calm and composed, U.S. officials said.

Those who meet Putin are often surprised that his tone is “mild-mannered and soft-spoken,” Finer said. A famous photo of Obama and Putin looking uncomfortable during a 2013 meeting in Northern Ireland was interpreted as a sign of their mutual disdain.

But Finer said the Russian leader's “body language tends to be slouched, looking down as if there are notes in front of him. He will then make eye contact for emphasis. I got the impression of someone who is supremely confident, relaxed, not super-animated. That's not to say the content of his words is relaxed or soft in any way. He can deliver quite hard messages.”

Putin has developed a long list of grievances over U.S. actions, which he often recites to start meetings, former Obama aides said. Many have to do with visa delays for Russian officials or the treatment of Russian diplomats who are not granted meetings — a grievance U.S. officials found disingenuous, given that American diplomats are routinely harassed and intimidated in Moscow.

Obama aides said they tried to funnel Putin's complaints into a “separate channel” to be handled by lower-level aides while attempting to steer him back to geostrategic matters such as Ukraine, Syria and the Iran nuclear deal.

Those topics got him even more animated, however. Obama's relations with Putin took a downward turn in 2014 when the United States and European allies imposed economic sanctions over Russia's annexation of Crimea. In meetings, Putin would refer to “Ukrainian fascists,” former Obama aides said.

The Russian leader is typically the only person on his side of the table who speaks, the former aides said. He seldom delegates authority, and he has a solid command of the issues, especially energy, where he recites facts and figures.

Although he only recently learned English, Putin has been known to correct a translator, the officials said. As he speaks, he scans for reactions, looking for signs of division, and he considers it a sign of weakness if another world leader is cut off, or corrected, by a lower-ranking aide.

Putin also has a penchant for trolling his rivals. During a meeting with Kerry in 2016, Putin mocked him for carrying his own luggage off the plane, suggesting that it was a cash bribe to work out disagreements over Syria. In 2007, Putin brought his black Labrador to a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is scared of dogs.

More recently, Putin said with a straight face on Russian television that he would offer asylum to former FBI director James B. Comey, who was fired by Trump and then gave damaging congressional testimony about Trump in the ongoing Russia probe.

Putin's sarcastic asides can reveal his sharply different view of the world compared with the Americans'. In 2015, after a three-hour negotiating session with Kerry over Syria and Ukraine, Putin invited the U.S. delegation to a cocktail reception.

The American side was made up largely of women, prompting one to joke that Kerry was “not afraid of strong women.” Putin then teased Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about why the Russians had no female aides, which led to an off-color conversation about gender and sexual orientation, according to former U.S. officials familiar with knowledge of the exchange.

Regarding that formal meeting with Putin, Wendy Sherman, former undersecretary of state who was in attendance, said the U.S. delegation “came away thinking there might be some openings. But none of those really materialized.”

She added: “This was a leader who was sure about what he was about and didn't need to bluster or pretend or try to impress.”

Another major frustration for the Americans was that Putin did not always have a high regard for facts. Antony Blinken, a former high-ranking aide to both Obama and Biden, recalled several Oval Office calls during which Obama tried to find common ground with Putin on Ukraine.

“It got to the point where he would be claiming there were no Russians in Ukraine,” Blinken recalled. “And Obama would say to him, ‘Vladimir, we can see things. We have eyes. We know it's not true’. He would just move on.”

Trump, too, has developed a reputation for ignoring facts in favor of bluster and bullying.

“You have two of the most powerful leaders with the most adversarial relationships with the truth,” Blinken said. “Trump does things in a theatrical way. Putin is the antithesis of that. But the objective is the same: Whatever advances the ends you're trying to achieve, it's fine.”


• David Nakamura covers the White House for The Washington Post. He has previously covered sports, education and city government and reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Japan.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related media:

 • VIDEO: This is what Putin hopes to get out of Trump at the G20 meeting

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: Vladimir Putin: From the KGB to president of Russia


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/phone-taps-power-plays-and-sarcasm-what-its-like-to-negotiate-with-vladimir-putin/2017/07/05/edcd8246-5e66-11e7-9fc6-c7ef4bc58d13_story.html
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« Reply #5 on: July 07, 2017, 12:39:15 am »


Putin is going to eat Trump for breakfast.

Trump is a nobody who is waaaaaay out of his depth.
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« Reply #6 on: July 07, 2017, 01:10:00 am »

Really...you mean the same sort of outcome that you predicted in the Trump versus Clinton election...
😴
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« Reply #7 on: July 07, 2017, 12:15:02 pm »


from The Washington Post....

Trump has the most to win — or lose — from the G-20 summit

The U.S. president faces a steep learning curve on the world stage.

By DAVID IGNATIUS | 5:19PM EDT - Thursday, July 06, 2017

A protester holds a banner depicting President Trump during a demonstration in advance of the G-20 summit in Hamburg. — Photograph: Fabian Bimmer/Reuters.
A protester holds a banner depicting President Trump during a demonstration in advance of the G-20 summit in Hamburg.
 — Photograph: Fabian Bimmer/Reuters.


PRESIDENT TRUMP has been moving inexorably toward Friday's high-stakes summit meeting since Election Day. He campaigned on a pledge to seek better relations with Russia's President Vladimir Putin. And since November, his aides have assumed that Trump's first real test would be a belligerent North Korea.

These two challenges — Russia and North Korea — will converge in the meetings that will take place in Hamburg on Friday and Saturday. The other major players at the Group of 20 summit pose subtle problems, too: China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. For an inexperienced American president, it will be a steep learning curve.

Summits occasionally intersect with looming military crises, as is the case with Hamburg. Looking back over the record of famous top-level encounters, you can find some epic failures: Munich in 1938; Yalta in 1945; Vienna in 1961. Each is the story of a Western leader who blundered in thinking he could rationally accommodate a dictator.

Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoir White House Years of Moscow's canny evaluation of U.S. diplomacy on the eve of a May 1972 summit between President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev: “They doubted whether America could sustain both the willingness to confront and the readiness to co-operate at the same time.” The Russians and Chinese are doubtless asking the same question this week about the United States.

Trump's erratic tweets and public statements make it hard to predict his diplomatic strategy in Hamburg. That's partly by design; Trump thinks he gains leverage by making others uncertain. But the rhetorical zigzags also represent genuine uncertainty within this contentious White House. This president may be a dealmaker, but he's not a strategist.

In its pre-summit planning, the White House has seemed to be preparing for two broad moves: a new joint effort with Russia to stabilize Syria, and a threat-backed campaign to pressure North Korea to suspend missile and nuclear tests. Both are worthy goals; but each will require a diplomatic finesse that Trump, in his first six months in office, has rarely shown.

This weekend's summitry will be complicated by the interaction of so many big egos, all looking for a “win”. Trump is the most volatile personality, prone to respond impulsively when he feels cornered. Putin is the cold-blooded ex-spy with a chip on his shoulder, eager for validation after three years of sanctions and isolation. Chinese President Xi Jinping is the “princeling” autocrat who leads the world's most dynamic economy. And offstage in Pyongyang is Kim Jong Un, the baby-faced dictator racing to build nuclear missiles.

Trump is the least experienced of the group. Given his unpopularity at home and with most traditional U.S. allies, he has the most to gain or lose. According to national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Trump has “no specific agenda” for the meetings with Putin. He may hope for a genial get-acquainted session as with Xi at Mar-a-Lago, but that's not Putin's style. Trump would be wiser to go armed with a short list of ways the U.S.-Russia relationship can be improved — and Russian political meddling curbed.

In containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Trump would be wise to emulate the too-much-maligned approach to Iran of former president Barack Obama . He should build a coalition of countries that share the United States' view that the North Korean nuclear and missile testing must stop; he should offer direct negotiations if North Korea agrees to suspend testing while the talks continue; and he should build a high-tech offensive and defensive arsenal (remember Stuxnet?) in case the talks fail.

Summitry under military pressure is especially fraught. When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich in September 1938, war fears were so intense that Britain mobilized its fleet and began distributing gas masks. A frightened public accepted Chamberlain's capitulation to Adolf Hitler.

At the Yalta summit in February 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, sensing victory ahead, unwisely agreed to Soviet demands that paved the way for the division of Europe. “If only I could dine with Stalin once a week, there would be no trouble at all. We get on like a house on fire,” enthused an overconfident Churchill, quoted in David Reynolds's 2007 book, Summits,

President John F. Kennedy said privately after a nasty June 1961 summit in Vienna with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, “He just beat the hell out of me.”

Trump will probably say he won the Hamburg summit game, no matter what. The test will be whether this meeting helps dampen some of the fires burning dangerously around the world.


• David Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column for The Washingnton Post and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • Morell and Vinograd: What Putin's team is probably telling him about Trump

 • Japan, E.U. counter Trump with trade deal covering nearly 30% of world economy


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-the-most-to-win--or-lose--from-the-g-20-summit/2017/07/06/2473c8c2-6287-11e7-8adc-fea80e32bf47_story.html
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« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2017, 02:35:25 am »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump lacks the savvy and skill needed to cope with North Korea or Russia

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Friday, July 07, 2017



ON THURSDAY, President Trump spent yet another day embarrassing the United States on the international stage. Yes, he gave a pretty good speech before a Polish crowd in Warsaw in which he pledged to defend the values of the West. But then, in a news conference with the Polish president, he proved he was not serious about that pledge.

As Trump stood before the television cameras, he repeated his oft-stated contention that “nobody knows” who hacked the American presidential election, even though U.S. intelligence agencies and most members of Congress know for a fact it was the Russians. He then went on to rail against the free press with his tiresome blather about “fake news”. He even wondered aloud why NBC is not nicer to him since he made them a bunch of money as host of “The Apprentice”.

This nonsense is getting old and boring and it would be a relief if it could simply be ignored, but, of course, Trump's wayward words have consequences — especially because, today, he is meeting for the first time with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. If Trump actually cared about the West, or at least about his own country, he would be putting Putin on notice that attacks on America's democracy will not go unpunished. Trump, though, cannot separate in his mind the proven Russian meddling from his obsession with his clouded victory over Hillary Clinton. Thus locked in his own delusion, he is unlikely to make an issue of the election hack with Putin.

Instead, we can expect Putin to play to Trump's self-absorption. It will not be a shock if Trump lumbers out of the session with the cagey Russian proclaiming he has found a new best friend. That is more or less what he did after hosting China's President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in April. Back then, Trump made himself look foolish by announcing that, after being schooled by Xi for 10 minutes, it dawned on him that the situation with North Korea is really complicated. Maybe he should have read a book or talked to someone in the State Department before he met with Xi, like a normal president. Reportedly, Trump is going into the meeting with Putin just as untutored, with no agenda at all.

While Trump is galumphing around Hamburg meeting with world leaders who laugh behind his back, the wild man who runs North Korea as his own private dungeon is reveling in his latest affront to America. On the Fourth of July, Kim Jong Un's military shot off its first test of a missile that could hit U.S. soil.

In response, Trump fired of a couple of tweets. One said it is "hard to believe South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer.” The other suggested that "Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all.”

The apprentice president must think the cake he served Xi at Mar-a-Lago — “The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen,” Trump bragged at the time — persuaded the Chinese president to dump his impetuous ally, Kim. It ain't gonna happen.

North Korea is China's East Germany. The Chinese government does not want to see a united Korean peninsula that is tied closely to the U.S. It perceives that the fall of Kim might very well lead to instability in China. And, the truth is, there is a large faction within Chinese ruling circles who believe anything that is bad for the U.S. is good for China. As a result, they don't really mind that North Korea is presenting Trump with a thorny problem that has no good solution.

China's leadership will do what is in China's interest and they are still far from putting “a heavy move” on Kim. They cannot be expected to go out of their way to help a president whose tough talk dissipates as soon as an autocrat from afar gets him in a room and flatters his ego.

In his Warsaw speech — for once reading from a prepared text instead of winging it — Trump told the crowd, “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Actually, the more pertinent question, just now, is whether Trump has the attention span and the brainpower required to be the leader of the West. So far, in the judgment of the international community, the answer is a resounding no.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-north-korea-trump-20170706-story.html
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« Reply #9 on: July 08, 2017, 02:43:22 am »

Mmmm...well it's easy to see now why they call the LA rag left leaning......what a lot of crap😒
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« Reply #10 on: July 08, 2017, 01:30:20 pm »

Ktj....."Putin is going to eat Trump for breakfast.

Trump is a nobody who is waaaaaay out of his depth."

....another kiwirail worker prediction gone horribly wrong..🙄

..tell me..it it a prerequisite for kiwirail workers to be brain dead demented lefties who must always be wrong about everything?😏
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« Reply #11 on: July 08, 2017, 02:40:45 pm »










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« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2017, 02:52:47 pm »

Don't think the even the lefty media saw it that way.....most reports seemed quite positive.....even the fake news capital CNN seemed to make it sound positive😜

....no...I think it is a "well done" to president Donald J Trump.....again doing a great job as leader of the free world....excluding the  demented left of course.....who will only ever look for negatives....but they are struggling with Trumps performance at hos meeting with Putin....and all other world leaders who are falling over themselves to talk with him...😉
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« Reply #13 on: July 08, 2017, 03:00:47 pm »


from The Washington Post....

At G-20, world aligns against Trump policies
ranging from free trade to climate change


Normally a venue for drab displays of international comity, this gathering of economic
powers saw clashes and talk of a possible transatlantic trade war. The tensions were
also a warning signal of Washington’s diminished clout as leaders mounted a
near-united opposition to U.S. policies ranging from climate to free trade.


By MICHAEL BIRNBAUM and DAMIAN PALETTA | 5:14PM EDT - Friday, July 07, 2017

From front left, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the start of the first working session of the G-20 summit. — Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
From front left, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the start of
the first working session of the G-20 summit. — Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.


HAMBURG — The growing international isolation of the United States under President Trump was starkly apparent during Friday as the leaders of major world economies mounted a nearly united opposition front against Washington on issues ranging from climate to free trade.

At a gathering of the Group of 20 world economic powers — normally a venue for drab displays of international comity — there were tough clashes with the United States and even talk of a possible transatlantic trade war.

The tensions were a measure of Trump's sharp break with previous U.S. policies. They were also a warning signal of Washington's diminished clout, as the leaders of the other nations who gathered in Hamburg mulled whether to fix their signatures to statements that would exclude Trump or to find some sort of compromise. Two European officials said they were leaning toward a united front against Washington.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faced the difficult job of bridging the differences, made little attempt to paper over the disagreements after the first day of meetings.

“The discussions are very difficult. I don't want to talk around that,” Merkel said.

She described the view of most participants that “we need free but also fair trade,” a rejection of Trump's skepticism about the value of sweeping free-trade agreements. And she predicted that the lower-level officials charged with negotiating a final statement deep into the night “had a lot of work ahead of them.”

Some of the clearest divides had to do with climate change after Trump's decision to pull the United States from the Paris climate accord. There were sharp warnings about U.S. steel policy as Trump mulls restrictions on imports.

The summit was also the venue for the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom U.S. intelligence agencies accuse of intervening in November's election to swing it in favor of the Republicans. The two leaders sat for a 2-hour-and-16-minute meeting, which started out with warm jokes but ended with a disagreement about whether Trump accepted Putin's denial that his country had interfered in the election.

In one of the most consequential decisions of his young administration, Trump could within days impose the restrictions on steel, a move that could affect trade with more than a dozen major countries.

“We will respond with countermeasures if need be, hoping that this is not actually necessary,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters, adding figuratively: “We are prepared to take up arms if need be.”

Juncker warned that Europe would respond in days, not months, if Trump announces the restrictions.

The comments made for a remarkable display of disharmony as the gathering got underway. They also were a reflection of how European officials not only do not fear Trump but also see much to gain from opposing him. Trump is deeply unpopular in Europe, and politicians here can get a boost when they emphasize their differences.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has nearly finished a multi-month review of U.S. steel imports, and he has said that the large amount of steel imported by the United States puts national security at risk because it has weakened the domestic steel industry. The White House is considering using this rationale to impose new restrictions, either by imposing tariffs or quotas, or a combination of the two.

Ahead of the summit, the White House was close to making a decision, but top Trump administration advisers slowed the process down at the last minute, persuading Trump to meet with other world leaders at the G-20 before deciding how to proceed.

The Trump administration has blamed China for what it says is a “global overcapacity” of steel, essentially arguing that China's government is subsidizing its steel industry and allowing producers to create and export so much steel that it drives down prices and makes it difficult for U.S. producers to compete.

But any U.S. restriction on steel imports would have a relatively muted effect on China and would hit other countries much harder.

The largest exporters of steel to the United States are Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, according to the IHS Global Trade Atlas. Germany also has a large steel industry, and German officials have been concerned about what a unilateral move to impose restrictions on steel imports to the United States might mean.

Trump and Merkel spoke about trade and steel a few days ago, a reflection of how seriously both sides consider any new action on the issue.

U.S. negotiators were pressing their international counterparts on what they described as a global glut of steel production in the hopes that they can reach an agreement by Saturday on how to curb it, a U.S. official said. The official said the issue was consuming significant time.

Other countries have also stood in opposition to Trump's drive to erect trade barriers.

When there is protectionism, “the entire international economy shrinks,” Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Norio Maruyama told reporters.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told leaders that all countries in the global economy must abide by “free and fair rules, and these rules need to be maintained at the high level, and need to be respected,” Maruyama said.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Trump wrote of the G-20 that “I will represent our country well and fight for its interests! Fake News Media will never cover me accurately but who cares!”

After the conclusion of the first day of meetings, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump's interactions with foreign leaders were going very well.

“We've had very productive economic meetings,” he told reporters at the summit. “There's been very substantive issues discussed,” he said without going into detail.

As Trump entered the meetings on Friday morning, he strode up to Merkel, smiling, then shook her hand vigorously. Walking away, he looked toward reporters and pumped his fist in the air.

The White House's National Economic Council has changed the Trump administration's approach to steel in the past week, people familiar with the strategy said. It is hoping to galvanize other countries at the G-20 to work together to confront China over its government support for its steel industry, with the idea that joint pressure could be more effective and remove the possibility that the United States has to move alone.

It is unclear, though, whether that approach will be effective. European Union officials on Friday emphasized their commitment to free trade and open borders.

“It's up to us to avoid such things as protectionism, this very simple thing. That would be wrong,” Juncker said.

The E.U. has pointed proudly at a wide-ranging trade deal with Japan, concluded on Thursday, as a retort to Trump's protectionist inclinations. Juncker said Europe expects to increase its exports to Japan by a third after trade barriers drop away.

Merkel “certainly will have to use all of her diplomatic skill to make headway on these difficult questions,” Juncker said.

After Friday's meetings, lower-level negotiators were poised to gather late and hammer out details through the night.

Another E.U. leader, European Council President Donald Tusk, said he was heartened by Trump's words of support for Western organizations such as NATO during a Thursday visit to Warsaw ahead of the G-20. But he was cautious about whether the American outlook had actually changed after months of strain between Washington and Europe.

“We have been waiting for a long time to hear these words from President Trump,” said Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland. “But the real question is whether it was a one-time incident or a new policy. President Trump said yesterday in Warsaw that words are easy but it is actions that matter. And the first test will be our meeting here in Hamburg.”


Isaac Stanley-Becker contributed to this report.

• Michael Birnbaum is The Washington Post's Brussels bureau chief. He previously served as the bureau chief in Moscow and in Berlin, and was an education reporter.

• Damian Paletta reports on White House economic policy for The Washington Post. He also covers intelligence and national security for The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related stories:

 • Tillerson and Trump are diplomatically outgunned at G-20

 • Trump and Putin run overtime in first face-to-face talks

 • Protesters block Melania Trump from G-20 event

 • Merkel appears to roll her eyes at Putin

 • PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY: See President Trump as he travels abroad for the G-20 economic summit


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/at-g-20-eu-warns-of-trade-war-if-trump-imposes-restrictions-on-steel/2017/07/07/0ffae390-62f4-11e7-a6c7-f769fa1d5691_story.html
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« Reply #14 on: July 08, 2017, 03:01:24 pm »


Good job that the USA is on the outer.

Donald Trump....Make America a Pariah Again!!

SNIGGER.
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« Reply #15 on: July 08, 2017, 03:15:45 pm »

Yes..the "rest of the world" don't want Trump to do what is best for America....
..they want Trump do do what is best for the "rest of the world" ...and America to pay for it😳
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« Reply #16 on: July 08, 2017, 03:29:40 pm »


Trump wants to play the “America First” game.

Fine, then the rest of the world can play the “Rest of the World First” game.

In the resulting trade war, America has the most to lose if every other country is trading with each other but erecting trade barriers against the United States.

Trump is too dumb to see that, but when even more American jobs go down the dunny, perhaps his stupid supporters may.

But then again, they're as DUMB as DOGSHIT (they voted for Trump), so who cares if their jobs go down the tubes, eh?
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« Reply #17 on: July 08, 2017, 03:52:23 pm »

Oh....so you are big on free trade then.....😳


And.....not only does Trump seem to be a far superior president than Oh-bummer...

...but this guy Rex Tillerson seems to be way more superior at his job than that other Weasle Kerry was....looks to be a better team all round....would you agree😳



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« Reply #18 on: July 08, 2017, 04:23:38 pm »


Trump can huff & puff all he likes.

The world is slowly turning its back on the America of Donald Trump.

The SEPOs are irrelevant in today's world, thanks to Trump.
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« Reply #19 on: July 08, 2017, 04:30:29 pm »

So...based on the reports you have seen..do you think it turned out how you predicted....when you said that Putin would....."eat Trump for breakfast"

...I don't know...I just didn't see that...unless I missed something...
...could you show the reporting that backed up your prediction.

,,much appreciated😜
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« Reply #20 on: July 08, 2017, 07:35:18 pm »


With the rest of the world increasingly turning their backs on Trump (see what is happening at the G-20 summit), America led by Trump is going to become increasingly irrelevant.

The EU have already stated that when Trump slaps tariffs on imported steel (something he is promising to do), they will respond in kind within a matter of days.

And even American economists are predicting that any subsequent trade tariffs war will hurt America and American jobs considerably more than it will hurt Europe.

It's really telling that the official photograph of leaders and their wives from the opening ceremony of the G-20 summit shows Donald and Melania Trump in the second row.

I guess the other European leaders closed up the gaps and stopped Trump from bullying his way to the front-centre for the photograph as he did during the NATO summit.

Here is a picture taken while leaders and their spouses were posing for the official photographs....


Heads of state and governments and their spouses, plus representatives of invitees, pose for a photograph in front of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg. — Photograph: Ludovic Marin/Pool Photo/European Pressphoto Agency.
Heads of state and governments and their spouses, plus representatives of invitees, pose for a photograph in front of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg.
 — Photograph: Ludovic Marin/Pool Photo/European Pressphoto Agency.

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« Reply #21 on: July 08, 2017, 11:12:37 pm »

Just watched CNN report on G20..... reports that Trump has been the center of attention😳
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« Reply #22 on: July 08, 2017, 11:46:03 pm »


Trump has been marginalised.

And he's an idiot.

He meekly accepted Putin's assurance that the Russians weren't involved in hacking anything in America during the election last year.

Yet American intelligence services have produced evidence that the Russians did indulge in hacking and interference in the election results.

Which shows that Trump is a gullible idiot who was completely outsmarted by Putin who played him like a chess piece.

Trump is the emperor who has no clothes, but the truly stupid are too mentally-retarded to see what is right in front of their faces.

Some of those mentally-retarded are even Kiwis. Hilarious, eh?

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« Reply #23 on: July 09, 2017, 04:02:28 am »

Do have actual evidence of that or is it just your fake news, using the Lavrov version as opposed to the Tillerson version of events.....don't always believe what the Russians say...that's where your friend Oh-bummer went wrong🙄
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« Reply #24 on: July 09, 2017, 06:15:05 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

Trump and Merkel's relationship shows no thaw after G-20 summit

By CATHERINE STUPP | 3:25PM PDT - Saturday, July 08, 2017

President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the launch event for the Women's Entrepreneur Finance Initiative on Saturday in Hamburg. — Photograph: Patrik Stollarz/Associated Press.
President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend the launch event for the Women's Entrepreneur Finance Initiative
on Saturday in Hamburg. — Photograph: Patrik Stollarz/Associated Press.


PRESIDENT TRUMP's tense relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel hasn't gotten any better after a two-day Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, where Trump was isolated on the other leaders' climate resolution.

“I can't exactly judge how things will be tomorrow or the day after,” Merkel said at a news conference after the summit finished Saturday.

Trump's private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin stole the show at the G-20. But it was Merkel who was in the hot seat as she shepherded the 19 other leaders through tricky negotiations and brushed aside speculation that Trump would upend the rest of the group's common ground on issues ranging from economic policy to development and trade.

Violent protests outside the summit increased pressure on Merkel. She is in the middle of an election campaign and despite her comfortable lead in polls, Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic candidate who is challenging her, recently amped up his criticism of her for not standing up to Trump.

Her strained relationship with Trump was on display during the summit on her home turf — her last big international meeting before the September election. She fielded journalists' questions about her relationship with Trump and his daughter Ivanka's participation at a G-20 event on women's entrepreneurship — Ivanka was booed when she spoke at an event in Berlin this spring.

Merkel's relationship with Trump buckled earlier this year when he complained about Germany's trade surplus with the U.S. and threatened to impose tariffs on imports from the country.

Trump praised the German chancellor on Saturday, telling her, “You have been amazing, and you have done a fantastic job.” But Merkel made clear that the two leaders still don't see eye to eye.

“I can only take things as they are,” Merkel told reporters on Saturday.

Merkel said that it was especially difficult to negotiate with Trump on trade and climate issues.

A resolution on the Group of 20's positions published at the end of the summit singles out the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which caps emission levels. Other countries that supported the document include oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia.

Merkel made efforts to explain after the summit that she did not broker a watered-down G-20 resolution full of concessions to Trump, even though the document mentions that his view on climate policy differs from other leaders'.

Officials working at European Union institutions pushed during document negotiations to remove a sentence referencing the United States' plan to help other countries “use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently,” one EU official said on condition of anonymity.

Europeans did not want any mention of fossil fuels, and they were supported by a “critical mass of countries,” the official said on Saturday.

Government officials who did the legwork to prepare the resolution wanted to contain Trump's views on climate change as a way to alleviate any doubt that the agreement could crash without the U.S. involved. Other leaders doubled down on their pledge to cut emissions under the Paris accord.

“Where there is no consensus, there has to be dissonance,” Merkel said, adding that she approved of the other countries' commitment to the Paris agreement.

“The communiqué could only be agreed in the way it was agreed with the United States.”

On top of Merkel's delicate negotiating tactics over climate policy, she said talks with Trump on trade issues were “especially hard”.

The resolution includes references to fighting trade protectionism as well as an olive branch to Trump in a line mentioning the use of “legitimate trade defense instruments” to make trade fairer.

But Trump's relationship with European leaders is still tense.

Before meeting British Prime Minister Theresa May on the sidelines of the G-20 talks on Saturday, Trump struck a nerve.

A trade agreement between the U.S. and the U.K. will be done “very, very quickly,” Trump said, once the country finishes negotiations to leave the European Union, which are expected to end in 2019. Britain's trade deals are a sore point for European leaders who say the U.K. cannot legally start working out new agreements until it officially leaves the 28-country bloc and stops applying its trade laws.

Those tensions will be on display again next week when Trump returns to Europe for a World War I ceremony with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron has criticized Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement and encouraged American climate scientists to move to France.

At a news conference at the end of the G-20, Macron said, “Our world has never been so divided.”


Catherine Stupp reported from Hamburg, Germany.

• Catherine Stupp is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. She reports for the Los Angeles Times and numerous other newspapers.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-merkel-trump-relationship-20170708-story.html
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