"Trump Threatens to End All Trade With Allies"
"Leaving the G7 summit on Saturday, President Trump said that the U.S. might end all trade with America’s closest allies if those countries don’t submit to his demands over reduced trade barriers. Trump also confirmed that he had told the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Italy that there should be no tariffs between them and the U.S. of any kind. Whether Trump’s characteristically hyperbolic threat, or overarching proposal, will be taken seriously is another matter.
Referring to what he called “ridiculous and unfair” tariffs on U.S. imports, Trump said, “It’s going to stop — or we’ll stop trading with them. And that’s a very profitable answer, if we have to do it.”
Trump left the G7 while it was still underway so that he could travel to Singapore to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The trade-warring president claimed that his relationship with other G7 leaders was “a 10,” but the contentious summit clearly proved otherwise.
The Trump administration recently imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU and Canada, having already imposed them on Japan. Those countries, along with Mexico, have pledged to impose their own higher tariffs on billions of dollars of U.S. imports in retaliation, as America’s allies appear to have become fed up with the combative and chaotic Trump administration, and are shifting their strategy from trying to reach and educate Trump about the complexities of international trade, to seeking to punish the U.S. economy instead.
“If they retaliate, they’re making a mistake,” Trump said on Saturday, meaning that he believes U.S. allies have more to lose than gain by entering into a trade war with the U.S."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...th-allies.html