there has never been a disaster like the G7 meeting that just took place. It could herald the beginning of a trade war, maybe even the collapse of the Western alliance. At the very least it will damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally for decades to come; even if Trump eventually departs the scene in disgrace, the fact that someone like him could come to power in the first place will always be in the back of everyone’s mind.
.. I’m already seeing headlines to the effect that Trump took a belligerent “America first” position, demanding big concessions from our allies, which would have been bad. But the reality was much worse.
.. He didn’t put America first; Russia first would be a better description. And he didn’t demand drastic policy changes from our allies; he demanded that they stop doing bad things they aren’t doing. This wasn’t a tough stance on behalf of American interests, it was a declaration of ignorance and policy insanity.
.. Trump started with a call for readmitting Russia to the group, which makes no sense at all. The truth is that Russia, whose GDP is about the same size as Spain’s and quite a bit smaller than Brazil’s, was always a ringer in what was meant to be a group of major economies. It was brought in for strategic reasons, and kicked out when it invaded Ukraine.
.. There is no possible justification for bringing it back, other than whatever hold Putin has on Trump personally.
.. Then Trump demanded that the other G7 members remove their “ridiculous and unacceptable” tariffs on U.S. goods – which would be hard for them to do, because their actual tariff rates are very low. The European Union, for example, levies an average tariff of only three percent on US goods.
.. Yes, Canada imposes high tariffs on certain dairy products. But it’s hard to make the case that these special cases are any worse than, say, the 25 percent tariff the U.S. still imposes on light trucks.
.. His trade advisers have repeatedly claimed that value-added taxes, which play an important role in many countries, are a form of unfair trade protection. But this is sheer ignorance
.. they’re just a way of implementing a sales tax — which is why they’re legal under the WTO.
.. He may just have been ranting. After all, he goes on and on about other vast evils that don’t exist, like a huge wave of violent crime committed by illegal immigrants (who then voted in the millions for Hillary Clinton.)
Was there any strategy behind Trump’s behavior? Well, it was pretty much exactly what he would have done if he really is Putin’s puppet: yelling at friendly nations about sins they aren’t committing won’t bring back American jobs, but it’s exactly what someone who does want to break up the Western alliance would like to see.
.. Alternatively, maybe he was just acting out because he couldn’t stand having to spend hours with powerful people who will neither flatter him nor bribe him by throwing money at his family businesses – people who, in fact, didn’t try very hard to hide the contempt
.. this was an utter, humiliating debacle. And we all know how Trump responds to humiliation.
Ultrafiltered Milk Sparks a U.S.-Canada Trade Battle
The dispute over the protein product, used primarily for making cheese, could have ripple effects in global dairy markets
U.S. dairy farmers and processors in Wisconsin, New York and Minnesota have been hurt by a newly adopted Canadian pricing policy that encourages Canadian dairies to buy certain types of milk products domestically. The specific product in the trade dispute is a milk-protein concentrate called ultrafiltered milk that is used primarily in cheese-making to increase yields.
In 2016, the U.S. exported $102 million in ultrafiltered milk to Canada, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. But industry observers estimate that exports have dropped to near zero since February, when Canada created a nationwide dairy classification that lowered the price of Canadian milk used to make ultrafiltered milk.
.. “If you take Nafta away, all of a sudden it gets more expensive to sell U.S. agriculture products,”.. Nafta has been very good for U.S. farmers, Mr. Newton says, and pulling out could have all kinds of negative effects, such as Mexico shifting corn purchases from the U.S. to South America, or losing an important market for rice... Because Canada has relatively strict dairy policies and a supply-management system that controls the amount of milk that reaches market, experts say U.S. milk tends to be cheaper than Canadian milk... the demand from Canadian cheesemakers for U.S. milk proteins like ultrafiltered milk, a relatively new milk protein that was developed well after Nafta was put in place.There are no explicit terms in the treaty for dealing with ultrafiltered milk, since it doesn’t fit into any of the dairy chapters that existed when Nafta was signed... “We have been producing more and more milk in the upper Midwest, and we’ve reached a point where other processors are full to the gills,”.. “For the industry, there is not going to be much of an impact,” Mr. Gould says. “But for individual farmers, it will be devastating.”