The US And UK Will Live In Splendid Isolation As The World Moves Forward Without Us
While much of the focus on the G20 meeting revolved around the Trump-Putin love fest, the gathering also highlighted the increasing isolation of both the US and Britain, all of it self-inflicted.
The EU and Japan made a point of announcing a trade agreement that, if consummated, would create what Japanese PM Abe called “the world’s largest free, advanced, industrialized economic zone” , even larger than NAFTA. The meeting then ended with a statement on climate change in which the US was the only dissenting vote, leaving us further isolated and abdicating our global leadership position. As one French diplomat noted, “Whatever leadership is, it is not being outvoted, 19 to 1.”
Trump’s refusal to vigorously defend NATO and Article V has already driven Europe to begin to move on the assumption that the US will no longer be a global leader and a reliable partner. After Trump’s disastrous G7 meeting, Angela Merkel stated, “The times in which we could completely rely on others are over to a certain extent. That is what I experienced in the last few days. That is why I can only say: We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands.” More than even Putin or the fear of the far right, Trump seems to have unified Europe more than ever.
The Europeans are also preparing to retaliate if Trump goes ahead with his threats to impose steel tariffs. Although Trump is mainly focused on the Chinese, these tariffs could also effect the EU. Apparently there was an agreement to draw up proposals to deal with the steel glut at the G20 meeting but there was no clear resolution and still no indication whether the tariffs were just another empty threat from Trump or something that actually might happen.
After playing Trump, (whose family was looking for Chinese investments to bail out a disastrous NY real estate deal), like a fiddle at Mar-a-Lago, President Xi of China is ready and willing to fill the void left by Trump’s vanishing act. China is already a huge investor in Africa and is now expanding its global reach with its Silk Road initiative and domination in renewable energy technology, especially in the wake of Trump’s pulling out of the Paris Agreements. The renminbi has become a global reserve currency and the collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership has allowed China to become Asia’s leader almost by default. Australia is largely re-thinking it relationship to the US in the wake of Trump and smaller Asian countries increasingly rely on Chinese trade and investment.
Even Canada has started to hedge its reliance on the US. Outgoing Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland stated quite clearly in her departure speech that Canada must “set our own clear and sovereign course” and diversify its trade so as not to become America’s “client state”. Canada is now becoming a refuge for immigrants escaping Trump’s deportation forces and stands solidly behind the Paris Climate Agreement. In addition, it has recently completed its own free trade agreement with the EU.
Now some Trump supporters will look at all this as a positive development, especially if the US is seen as offloading some of its military costs on its allies. But Trump isn’t planning to use any military savings that might come from this, instead looking to further increase the US military budget. And Trump’s positions go far from re-allocating shared costs more evenly to outright protectionism and isolation.
Meanwhile, Britain is following a similar path with Brexit. The UK is already being frozen out of EU issues as it begins negotiations to exit the European Union. There is an increasing realization that the agreement will probably never be consummated by the two year deadline, causing devastating new WTO trade rules to kick in and shaving 5% to 10% in UK growth over the next decade and a half. Theresa May herself is incredibly weak after barely surviving as PM in the last election and her majority is split between a “hard” and “soft” Brexit, making negotiations even more complicated. There is no doubt that this long-running uncertainty about the UK’s final relationship with the EU is and will be a drag on the UK economy.
May herself emerged from the G20 meetings talking up potential trade agreements once Britain leaves the EU. Trump vowed to May, “We will do a very big deal, a very powerful deal. Trade will be a big factor between our two countries.” And Japanese PM Abe at least floated the idea that a similar deal to the one he announced with the EU might be available to the UK.
It is really a pitiful sight to see the two former leaders of the free world shutting themselves off from the current international order and believing that they can somehow thrive simply by working with each other. It is a sad delusion for which their citizens will pay a dear price in the coming years. While I am no fan of Reagan or Thatcher, they both believed their countries had an important place on the global stage. It is a sign of how far astray conservatism has gone, that we are now left with the willing isolationists of Trump and May.