Quote:
Hamburg will also go down as a further mile marker in Europe’s slow emancipation from the U.S.
Washington may have signed the closing statement, but there was no real consensus.
Time and again, Merkel stressed the U.S.’s isolation on trade and climate issues.
“Everyone was against the United States of America,” on climate policy, Merkel said dryly.
Though Donald Trump complimented Merkel for her stewardship of the meeting, the German leader was not about to be charmed. Europe’s frustration over Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord runs deep. Merkel wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.
“The dissent wasn’t plastered over, but made clear,” Merkel said. She repeated what is fast becoming her mantra over the necessity for Europe to “take its fate into its own hands.”
If there was one winner at the G20, it was Europe. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s threat of swift retaliation against the U.S. if Trump imposed steel tariffs seemed to do the trick. Washington backed down, for now at least.
Brussels also basked in the glow of its planned trade pact with Japan and succeeded in putting the issue of migration on the G20’s agenda.
As the U.S. sheds its role as a defender of globalization and the liberal order, Europe is trying to preserve what it can.
Many Western liberals see Merkel as the champion of that effort.
As Germany heads toward a September election, Merkel’s Christian Democrats had hoped the spectacle of the G20 would offer a powerful coda to the chancellor’s latest term, an affirmation of her global standing.
Instead, it offered a reminder of her limitations.
http://www.politico.eu/article/europ...l-survives-it/
Evidently America was at its greatest before it was the hegemon of Europe or even before it was considered a great power at all.
Instead of leading the western world under Trump the US is losing its global standing and becoming an unpredictable, irrational outlier focused on the petty domestic issues at the expense of securing its own central position internationally.
Any agreement is only important to Trump if it somehow gives Americans more jobs or reduces the trade deficit, all other concerns are irrelevant or at most an after-thought. In spite of Americas great wealth, power and prestige it's current government is fixated upon satisfying their most basic needs at the expense of its own long-term well being, such as by working to mitigate the effects of global warming.
How can a people have so much yet complain that it's not enough and the world has somehow cheated them out of their fair share?