David Frum: Trump's Betrayal of Britain

[babylonsister]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/07/post-brexit-britain-needs-americas-help/565043/

Trump’s Betrayal of Britain
During his campaign, the president encouraged Brexit. Now, as Britain struggles with its transition from the EU, he’s turned his back.
David Frum
Jul 12, 2018

snip//

A more normal U.S. president would have already accepted responsibility for the EU–U.K. problem as a major foreign-policy challenge—and would have intervened to help America’s friends on both sides of the impasse. But Trump is not normal.

Every U.S. president from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama favored an integrated European economy with Britain on the inside. President Trump favored Brexit in 2016. Having gotten his wish, he has turned his back on his Brexiteer friends. The Leave campaign imagined that Brexit Britain would seamlessly transition from the EU to a new Anglosphere trading future. Instead, negotiations with the United States have barely begun—no surprise in this chaotic administration. (The chief trade negotiator for agriculture did not even take office until March 1.)

As Thomas Wright noted in Politico, rather than negotiate a U.S.–U.K. free trade pact, Trump has hit Britain with bogus national-security tariffs on steel and aluminum. His administration offered the U.K. an open-skies agreement on passenger aviation inferior to what the U.K. had enjoyed as a member of the EU, and is dropping broad hints that Britain may have to dismantle important elements of its cherished National Health Service as part of any future U.S.–U.K. trade deal.

Rather than soothe difficulties between the U.K. and EU, the Trump administration has inflamed them. In October 2017, the Trump administration joined with Canada, New Zealand, and other food exporters to disrupt a U.K.–EU agreement at the World Trade Organization over agricultural trade.

Mostly, though, the Trump administration has adopted a policy of malign neglect to the U.K.–EU portfolio. Trump cannot coax or nudge the two sides closer together. Trump’s avidity to topple Merkel’s government in Germany obviously gets in the way of enticing concessions from that government for the benefit of the U.K. Trump tweeted in June that “the people of Germany are turning against their leadership.” (Merkel’s approval rating is 51 percent, much higher than Trump’s.) His ambassador-provocateur expressed a wish for a more right-wing German government in a Breitbart interview in his first week on the job.

At the EU’s center, the Trump administration is utterly AWOL. Trump did not get around to nominating a U.S. ambassador to the EU until March, and the nominee did not arrive in Brussels until July 9. The chosen ambassador—a longtime Republican fundraiser—owns a small chain of hotels, but otherwise has little background or expertise in trade issues.

In the year before the EU vote, the U.K. was the best performing economy in the G7; since the midsummer of 2016, it has vied with Japan for last place. The U.K. and the United States are each other’s largest investor. Despite severe cuts after the 2008 financial crisis, the U.K. has stabilized defense spending and remains above NATO’s 2-percent-of-GDP target.

A poorer, more vulnerable, more inward-looking Britain will dwindle into a less-reliable partner for the United States. A close U.S. friend is in big trouble, and it should be in America’s high interest to help. But helping friends is not in Donald Trump’s nature or competence—and once this thin-skinned and unstable president catches a glimpse of that satirical big orange baby blimp over the skies of London, he’s likely to be confirmed in his apparent bedrock conviction that Vladimir Putin is the only overseas friend he’s got.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. MAGA means Making America Go Alone in the world . . . nt

[Snarkoleptic]

2. Seeking to undermine Merkel and May advances the first two items on Putin's wish list.

POTUS* is in thrall to Putin and works hard to undermine America and her allies.
Meanwhile, GOP either looks the other way, or actively works to protect him.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. Putin's investment in Trump is paying dividends

[stevenleser]

7. +1 Trillion. All of that. nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. Going after the NHS. Well that should increase his popularity.

[pangaia]

5. Just doing Putin's bidding to destroy Western Democracy and economies..

He is being blackmailed. Of course that's not hard to do.

[Merlot]

6. In the begining I thought blackmail as well, now I think he's a willing participant

It's not like any comprat tapes will damage him with his base. The only thing russia has on him is his debt/investments.

trumpft has been facinated with dictators for longer than he's been president.

[pangaia]

9. Yes, I agree.. both.

He is willing AND Putin has him by the balls, I think..sonwhow.

[world wide wally]

8. It is both mind boggling and depressing how effective it has been to appeal to hate in

America and the world.