Every foreign leader I’ve spoken with at #APEC thinks Trump presidency has been enormous gift for the Chinese.
Every single one.
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) November 10, 2017
“In every country Trump visited, none of the leaders entered trade negotiations or offered significant concessions.” https://t.co/F67H5SKBXS
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 10, 2017
The lesson of Trump’s visit to China is that if you a) Give him a big parade and b) lavish him with praise, he will soon be eating out of your hand.
— Gideon Rachman (@gideonrachman) November 10, 2017
I swear to Murphy the Trickster God, right now the Chinese leaders are using Trump to mock Putin. You wasted all that manpower and money on suborning the American, and we bought him off with a military parade and some tawdry public flattery!
From the Washington Post, “Trump’s ‘America first’ looks more and more like ‘America alone’”:
…As the president’s motorcade wove up a mountain road Saturday to a regional summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, news broke that the 11 nations that had once looked to U.S. leadership to seal the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership had moved on without the United States and announced a tentative agreement among themselves.
It marked a stunning turnabout that foreign-policy analysts warned could further erode U.S. standing at a time when China is embarked on a major economic expansion and further undermine global confidence in the United States’ ability to organize the world around its own liberal values…
Trump emphasized that he is working hard to improve U.S. relations with authoritarian regimes in China and Russia to win greater cooperation on the threats in North Korea and Syria. He faulted former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for lacking the right “chemistry” to have a productive relationship with Putin.
“I always said I think one of my strong suits is going to be foreign affairs, and we’re actually getting very good marks,” Trump said. “There’s nobody that I can think of that I don’t have a very good relationship with.”
But other signs from the president’s swing through the region reflected a shift in the way the United States promotes itself abroad — and in how the country is viewed and treated by others…
On foreign trips, Obama tried to use his charisma to promote American “soft power” to persuade foreign nations to move closer to the United States through means other than military might or trade. Obama conducted town-hall-style events with young people and delivered speeches at universities.
Trump, by contrast, has refrained from mingling with the general public. Over the past week, he has golfed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, spoken to troops at military bases and joined Xi on a private tour of the Forbidden City in Beijing, where he and first lady Melania Trump were treated to Peking opera performances of scenes from “The Monkey King” and “The Drunken Beauty.”
Open Thread: Trump, A Pawn Between Great PowersPost + Comments (219)