Curator note: The now-familiar pattern of haranguing our allies, this time it is Canada, continues. The negative impact of this behavior on our economy will be enormous and will be monitored here. The other lesson that may be dawning on all of us is the “almost incomplete inability” of any of our democratic “checks and balances” to rein in one person who is bent on courting disaster, causing mass destruction and destabilizing the world. Now that he is “wounded”, he is likely to be even more erratic, unpredictable and destructive.
WASHINGTON — President Trump added a new name Thursday to the list of countries he accuses of preying on American workers and exploiting naïve American trade policies: Canada.
“What they’ve done to our dairy farm workers is a disgrace,” Mr. Trump said as he ordered a sweeping investigation into whether steel imports are harming America’s national security. “We can’t let Canada or anybody else take advantage and do what they did to our workers and to our farmers.”
Mr. Trump admitted he was going off script because the steel order is aimed at more familiar trade boogeymen like China and Japan. But his outburst in the Oval Office toward a friendly neighbor punctuated a week when tough talk on trade took center stage in a White House deeply divided over how aggressively to erect the trade barriers that Mr. Trump promised during his campaign.
Trump Rejects U.S. Role In Libya, Rebuffing Italy
President Trump said on Thursday that he would not give the American military a direct role in helping stabilize war-ravaged Libya, rejecting years of pleading by Italy for more assistance in stemming African migrant traffic into Europe.
Mr. Trump’s comments came during a White House news conference with Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy, who implored the United States to step up its “critical” involvement in Libya, a former Italian colony.
“We need a stable and unified Libya,” Mr. Gentiloni, who has been in office since November, said, discussing a conflict that has sent thousands of asylum seekers across the Mediterranean to Italy and other European countries. “A divided country, and in conflict, would make civility worse.”
