US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a work session in the Casino of Biarritz on August 26, 2019, on the third and last day of the annual G7 Summit attended by the leaders of the world's seven richest democracies, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
President Trump used the World Economic Forum meeting to woo investors and business leaders by reassuring them that "America first does not mean America alone." But it was clear in Davos, Switzerland, this past week that geopolitical momentum lay with Beijing, not Washington.
National leaders seemed to vie with one another in Davos in calling for closer cooperation with China.
Chinese officials used Davos as another opportunity to speak out against protectionism, in what analysts have described as an effort to take advantage of global concerns about the Trump administration and its warnings that it would pursue a more aggressive trade policy.
In country after country, China is facing rising anger over its policies and its behavior - from trade to human rights - a major setback on a continent that Beijing has viewed as a more pragmatic, and thus more willing, partner to provide ballast against sharply deteriorating relations with the United States.
Donald Trump understood this and decided to call it out for what it was.
I'm no fan of Trump's foreign policy in practice, nor even of his antagonizing needed allies like Germany.
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Europe has suddenly realized that China's rhetoric about international cooperation was just hot air. You don't say.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment