There are a number of ways to interpret Trump’s response. It may signal his preference to upend global alliances because of his feelings about Trudeau. Trump has also never cared much for multilateral forums like the G7, where he is one among several world leaders trying to achieve a compromise. He prefers the go-it-alone style of negotiation, of the sort he is engaged in with North Korea, for which, if it’s successful, he will get sole credit. This could explain part of his preference for bilateral trade agreements—which few nations in the world are keen on—over multilateral ones with large trading blocs. Trump is also trying to infuse some unpredictability into the atmosphere ahead of his summit meeting Tuesday with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader. The American president honed his skills in the world of New York real estate. Perhaps he thinks it’s better to go into a meeting with Kim—until recently, viewed as the world’s most unpredictable leader—after making it clear that he won’t think twice about abandoning his own closest allies, even after committing to a communique with them. This has been referred to as the so-called “madman theory.”
But for each of those explanations, there is a counter-explanation. Consider the rationale for Trump’s response to Trudeau’s news conference. Macron’s office issued a statement that said “international cooperation can not be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks.” In other words, this wasn’t merely a difference of opinion over policy. It was personal. When you factor in Trump’s preference to go it alone, the issue becomes even more complicated. U.S. allies, as I have written, have little choice but to go along with Trump’s seemingly erratic behavior. They have no other allies. Trump has made his own preferences clear, praising China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin while bizarrely seeking Russia’s inclusion in the G7, a grouping from which it was suspended following its invasion in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimea. [...]
Trump’s view of U.S. alliances has been consistent from the start. U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s charitable notion that there is a “method to [Trump’s] … madness” appears to be marked by a clear absence of a method. Trump views America’s allies as freeloaders who have relied excessively on the United States for decades while treating it unfairly. While there may be something to this, with the U.S.-created global order under major strain and U.S.-Canada relations at perhaps their lowest point in modern times, Trump’s reaction to Trudeau undermines the idea that alliances are forged between democratic nations, not their leaders.
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