FOREIGN POLICY/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has been holed up in a series of rapid-fire briefing sessions on his upcoming 12-day, five-country tour through Asia — an effort the White House hopes will help avoid the kind of diplomatic snafus that have dogged his presidency.
The trip — Trump’s longest yet — comes at a tense moment in Asia, with the threat of the North Korea nuclear program looming. But some of Trump’s advisers believe the time away from Washington will offer the president, who leaves Friday, a brief respite from the Russia-related revelations that have consumed him in recent days.
Trump’s top advisers — including national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer — have met with the president in recent days to go over details of the trip, including in an hourlong briefing Friday in the Oval Office, according to administration officials. Top aides have sought to keep the briefings short to avoid overloading the president with details but have scheduled dozens of them to plan public remarks and outline what he should say about North Korea on defense and China on trade…
There are numerous ways Trump’s team could run into protocol problems in Asia, where many countries place a premium on proper behavior, said former U.S. officials who specialized in the subject…
The Trump administration has already made a series of rookie mistakes.”
-Andrew Restuccia, Nahal Toosi, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump advisers try to focus the president’s attention on Asia trip,” Politico, Nov. 1, 2017 05:09am