Don’t look now but?
Countries around the planet are beginning to form ties AGAINST America led by Donald Trump….
Not just China and Russia…
But now Canada and Mexico….
Donald Trump has made America the bad guy around the planet….
This is NOT good….
The deepening of the economic alliance between Russia and China will be high on the agenda as President Xi Jinping meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday amid their mutual estranged relations with the United States.
Xi and Putin are both then due to attend the annual St. Petersburg Economic International Forum, Russia’s flagship international investor forum that expects more than 1,000 representatives from China, starting on Thursday.
The U.S., however, is expected to miss the event after its former envoy to China and current ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, said he would not attend to protest Moscow’s prosecution of Baring Vostok private equity group founder Michael Calvey. The American investor has been accused by Russian authorities of embezzling 2.5 billion roubles (US$38 million) from the Vostochny Bank.
Calvey, who denies the charges, has asked prosecutors to be allowed to attend the forum having been released to a restrictive form of house arrest in April after spending two months in pre-trial detention.
In the midst of its trade war with the U.S., China has been working to strengthen its ties with Russia in multiple spheres.
Given extended U.S. and European Union sanctions against its officials and organization for its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, Russia also has reason to forge closer ties with China….
Trump has slapped both Canada and Mexico with steel and aluminum tariffs before lifting them; pushed both countries to their limits in tempestuous trade-deal negotiations; and generally behaved like an ill-tempered toddler, saying one thing one moment, and changing his mind the next.
In fact, the president has been such an agent of chaos that Mexico and Canada have reportedly formed something like an emotional support group. According to Politico, America’s neighbors have “learned to lean on each other with an informal support network to plot strategy and shape a shared action plan” for when the president goes off the rails. “What we are doing is, prepare and keep a strategy of how to coexist with what is sometimes unpredictable,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the publication on Tuesday. “That’s our obligation.”
Both countries have been forced to cater to the president’s whims over the last two and a half years, and both have sought to deal with Trump by keeping a level head and framing the issues in terms he can understand. “We’re trying to remind Trump and his administration that we’re their ally—not an ‘abuser,’”….
Note…
Jonathan Swan: “Trump allies say that when 2020 candidates to Biden’s left inevitably start hitting him on his free-trade past, Republicans will piggyback to try to undermine him ahead of a potential general election fight in the Rust Belt.”
“Expect them to begin asking questions like: What specifically will Biden do with China? Will he lift President Trump’s tariffs? How does Biden defend his past advocacy for NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership?”