FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Europeans have stopped trying to paper over their differences with President Trump and the United States.
Traditionally respectful of American leadership and mindful of the country’s crucial role in European defense and global trade, European leaders normally repress or soften their criticism of United States presidents. Europeans were generally not happy with President Barack Obama’s reluctance to involve the country in Libya and Syria, for example, or his tardiness to engage in what became an international confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, but their criticism was quiet.
But here at the Group of 20 summit meeting, public splits with Mr. Trump were the order of the day. Those rifts have been reflected in European domestic politics, too, from Britain and France to Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Europe must ‘take our fate into our own hands’ and stop ‘glossing over’ clear differences…
The strains were most visible here on climate policy and trade. Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord was widely condemned, and all the leaders aside from Mr. Trump signed up to language that called the agreement ‘irreversible.’
‘Whatever leadership is,’ said one senior French diplomat, who was not authorized to speak by name and insisted on anonymity, ‘it is not being outvoted, 19 to 1.’
The climate debate in the meeting displayed how hard it is to isolate the world’s richest, most powerful country.”
-Steven Erlanger, “Feeling That Trump Will ‘Say Anything,’ Europe Is Less Restrained, Too,” The New York Times online, July 9, 2017