Page 14 - Za's Pages August 2017

G-20 Summit: Top Five Takeaways From Trump’s Trip

HAMBURG, Germany — President Donald Trump’s G-20 trip was dominated by news of his “very robust” first meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin — but other critical issues hinged on his ability to maneuver through diplomatic channels.
After Trump received a rough reception last month during the NATO summit, foreign policy experts predicted a similar coolness in Hamburg, especially
after his recent policy pronouncements on climate and trade put him out of step with the other allies gathered in Germany.

But this international trip played better than that previous stop in Brussels, according to Jamie Fly, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund.
Trump seemed to have “navigated some of the differences that everyone knew would exist with the Europeans,” Fly said.

Optics was but one of Trump’s challenges, however. These five issues are the top takeaways of the G-20 summit:

1. Trump continued to pressure China for help with North Korea.

Tensions over North Korea were already high before the G-20, with urgency for a resolution over how to rein in the isolated nation renewed after an
intercontinental ballistic missile test earlier in the week.
“Something has to be done about it,” Trump reiterated at the start of a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday, adding that he
appreciates what’s been done by China regarding North Korea.

That’s a new tone from the one Trump took days earlier, chastising China for growing its trade relations with the regime of Kim Jong Un.
“So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
@realDonaldTrump
Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us - but we had to give it a try!
7:21 AM - 5 Jul 2017
The Xi-Trump meeting lasted over an hour and a half, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters on the plane returning to Washington. It would
have lasted longer, he said, “if we didn’t have to get pulled out to leave.”

@realDonaldTrump
Leaving Hamburg for Washington, D.C. and the WH. Just left China’s President Xi where we had an excellent meeting on trade & North Korea.
2:55 PM - 8 Jul 2017

The White House strategy in North Korea has counted heavily on a helping hand from the Chinese, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described their
actions Friday as “uneven.”
The United States has kept the pressure on Beijing, sanctioning a Chinese bank last week and excluding China from a trilateral meeting with leaders
from South Korea and Japan prior to the start of the G-20. That meeting yielded a joint statement from the three countries, pressing for the early adop-
tion of a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would put additional sanctions on North Korea to show “that there are serious consequences for its
destabilizing, provocative, and escalatory actions.”
U.S. bombers practiced their attack capabilities at a training range in South Korea on Friday, NBC News learned — a clear show of force to the North
Korean regime just days after the country tested the intercontinental ballistic missile.

Local media reported that the bombers flew close to the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea, but they did not cross demarcation
lines.
2. The U.S. got the cold shoulder on climate change.

Perhaps the most-watched policy emerging from the summit of world leaders centered on climate change and the effect of Trump’s withdrawal from
the Paris Climate Agreement. After one climate-change session, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Trump participated and “even made
a contribution” to discussions.
But by the end of the two-day summit, America was officially standing alone.
The United States was singled out in a G-20 statement for its stance on climate issues, and the other countries took the uncharacteristic step of noting
America’s lone position in rebuffing the accord.
“We take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” the end-of-summit document read. “The United
States of America announced it will immediately cease the implementation of its current nationally-determined contribution and affirms its strong com-
mitment to an approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.”

The other G-20 leaders called the Paris Agreement “irreversible” and French President Emmanuel Macron announced an end-of-year summit in
France to mark the accord’s two-year signing anniversary.
But the White House balked at the idea that the statement was done to brush aside the United States.

National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn told reporters on Air Force One that “it was never a situation where there was isolated forces” as “ev-
eryone accepted” the U.S. decision to get out of the Paris Agreement early on.