Tag: Trump foreign policy

Donald Trump’s Trade War with China is Spiraling Out of Control

History tells us that big movements in financial markets are difficult to predict, but when they come they happen very quickly. That is what we have seen over the past several days, as investors around the world have responded to a sudden escalation in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, and the growing realization that at least one of these economies is being led by someone who doesn’t appear to understand the risks he is taking.

After posting their biggest decline of the year on Monday—a slide of three per cent—U.S. stocks rebounded somewhat on Tuesday morning. The modest rebound came after the the Chinese central bank signalled that, for now at least, it wouldn’t allow another decline in the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan. Monday’s big fall on Wall Street came after the yuan fell almost two per cent on that day, and Chinese officials suggested that the decline was a response to President Trump’s decision, last week, to broaden tariffs on Chinese goods. In a further escalation, the Trump Administration announced, on Monday evening, that it was designating China as a currency manipulator, a move that Trump signalled on Twitter by accusing the Chinese government of “trying to steal our businesses and factories.” (A lower value of the yuan makes Chinese exports more competitive.) Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Trade War with China is Spiraling Out of Control”

US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman resigns

The Hill logoU.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman on Tuesday turned in his resignation letter to President Trump.

“American citizenship is a privilege and I believe the most basic responsibility in return is service to country,” Huntsman wrote. “To that end, I am honored by the trust you have placed in me as the United States ambassador to Russia during this historically difficult period in bilateral relations.”

“It is my hope that this will allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed,” he added. “I pledge my full effort in facilitating a smooth transition that ensures our foreign policy goals are kept in proper focus.”

View the complete August 6 article by Jessica Campisi on The Hill website here.

Dow plummets on devaluation of China’s currency

The Hill logoU.S. stock markets plummeted on Monday following China’s move to devalue its currency, Beijing’s latest step in a tense faceoff on trade with President Trump.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 900 points, or 3.5 percent, in its worst one-day drop in 2019.  The S&P 500 had fallen 107 points late in the trading session, or 3.7 percent.

If the Dow closes at that level, it would rank as the third-largest, single-day point drop in its history. The current top four all took place in 2018. In percentage terms, however, the plunge would not break the top 20.

View the complete August 5 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.

Dow Jones Plunges As Trump Announces New Tariffs

Trump announced new tariffs on goods from China on Thursday afternoon and sent the stock market tumbling.

At 1:25 p.m. Eastern time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stood at 27,121. At 1:26 p.m., Trump announced on Twitter “the U.S. will start, on September 1st, putting a small additional Tariff of 10% on the remaining 300 Billion Dollars of goods and products coming from China into our Country.”

By 1:50 p.m., the Dow plunged more than 350 points to 26,735.

By 2:25 p.m., an hour after Trump’s announcement, the Dow dropped even more, to 26,680, or 441 points lower.

View the complete August 1 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Trump Resisted Mnuchin’s Proposal to Warn China of New Tariffs

•  ‘We’ll be taxing them,’ Trump says of 10% levy on China goods

•  Trump sent tariffs tweet moments after Oval Office meeting

President Donald Trump resisted giving Beijing advance notice of his intent to slap a new 10% tariff on $300 billion in Chinese goods in an Oval Office meeting before he announced the duties, according to several people familiar with the discussion.

During the meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer briefed Trump on their talks in Shanghai this week with their Chinese counterparts. While the White House called the talks “constructive” in a statement issued Wednesday, Trump concluded that the two U.S. officials actually came away with nothing, the people said.

“When my people came home, they said ‘we’re talking, we have another meeting in early September,”’ Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Thursday for a campaign rally. “I said ‘that’s fine, but in the meantime, until such time as there’s a deal, we’ll be taxing them.’”

View the complete August 1 article by Jennifer Jacobs, Jenny Leonard, Shawn Donnan and Saleha Mohsin on the Bloomberg website here.

Landmark arms treaty set to implode on Friday as Pentagon eyes building new missiles

NOTE:  As of August 2, this treaty was allowed to expire, raising the possibility of a nuclear arms race with Russia again.

We are moving away from weapons being developed as deterrents, edging ever closer to an arms race.

The United States will officially leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on Friday, marking what some worry will be the resumption of a new arms race between Russia and the United States.

With the INF now essentially undone, 32 years of nonproliferation efforts will likely be reversed.

The 1987 INF treaty prompted the United States and Russia (then the Soviet Union) to dispose of nearly 2,700 conventional and nuclear weapons with a range of between 310 and 3,417 miles.

View the complete July 31 article by D. Parvaz on the ThinkProgress website here.

North Korea launches 2 short-range missiles, Seoul says

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said North Korea conducted its second weapons test in less than a week Wednesday, firing two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast in a move observers said could be aimed at boosting pressure on the United States as the rivals struggle to set up fresh nuclear talks.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missiles were launched from Wonsan, a city the North pushes as a vacation destination but that it also uses as a regular launch site.

It said both missiles were believed to have flown about 250 kilometers (155 miles) at a maximum altitude of 30 kilometers (19 miles), and that the South Korean and U.S. militaries were trying to gather more details.

The test, which would be yet another North Korean violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, comes as the country’s negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear weapons program are at a stalemate and as Pyongyang has expressed anger over planned U.S.-South Korean military drills.

View the complete July 31 article by Hyung-Jin Kim on the Associated Press website here.

Trump administration sanctions Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif

Axios logoThe Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, with a senior administration official telling reporters Zarif should not be treated internationally as a “credible” interlocutor.

Why it matters: As a senior administration official noted on a call with reporters announcing the decision, Zarif is “the international face” of Iran’s government and played a central role in negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal, which the U.S. withdrew from in May 2018. This seems to be another signal from the Trump administration that punishing Iran is a higher priority than coming to a new deal

“For far too long he has been indulged as the reasonable and credible face of Iran and today President Trump decided enough is enough.”
— Senior U.S. official

An official on the call accused Zarif of “spearheading propaganda and disinformation efforts” and implementing the policies of Iran’s supreme leader and Revolutionary Guard Corps.

View the complete July 31 article by Dave Lawler on the Axios website here.

The Bill for America First Is Coming Due

Two of America’s closest treaty allies have announced military efforts explicitly designed to exclude the U.S.

In this crowded and enervating week of news, it would have been easy to miss two small but consequential signs of the damage President Donald Trump and his team have done to America’s standing in the world. Two of America’s closest treaty allies have announced military efforts explicitly designed to exclude the United States. Australia is “seeking to cement its status as the security partner of choice for Pacific nations” by establishing an expeditionary training force. And the United Kingdom wants to create a multinational force to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s not a coincidence that allies are striking out on their own. Countries in the Pacific worry that the U.S. is forcing them to choose between their economic connections to China and their security relationships with the U.S. And while forcing this choice, the U.S. is also publicly calling the security guarantees into question—President Trump did so before arriving in Japan for the G20 summit. Meanwhile, European allies blame Trump-administration tactics for Iran’s decision to lash out at shipping in the Gulf. That’s why British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stressed that the purpose of the multinational force was to dissociate European governments from U.S. policy toward Iran. Hunt explicitly said, “It will not be part of the U.S. maximum pressure policy on Iran because we remain committed to preserving the Iran nuclear agreement.” Continue reading “The Bill for America First Is Coming Due”

I‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’: Disdain for Trump Runs Among Ambassadors

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff.

“Yes, yes, everyone does,” Gérard Araud, who retired this spring as the French ambassador, said on Wednesday morning of his own missives from Washington. “But fortunately I knew that nothing would remain secret, so I sent them in a most confidential manner.”

So did Mr. Darroch, who, alone and with Mr. Araud, tried to navigate the minefield of serving as the chief representative of a longtime American ally to a president who does not think much of the value of alliances.

View the complete July 10 article by David E. Sanger on The New York Times website here.