1. Donald Trump Jr. Makes the Russian Connection
All
along, the truth was right there in the emails — Donald Trump Jr.’s emails,
that is, which he releasedpublicly on Twitter Tuesday
morning after learning that The New York Times was about to publish their contents.
In
language so blunt and obvious it would make a Hollywood screenwriter blush, the
emails confirm what the president, his son and others have denied repeatedly
for more than a year: that top members of the Trump campaign met with
representatives of the Russian government in the expectation of help in
damaging Hillary Clinton and getting Donald Trump elected.
On
June 3, 2016, the younger Mr. Trump received an email from Rob Goldstone, a
former British tabloid reporter and music publicist, telling him that a Russian
government lawyer had “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official
documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with
Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
Mr.
Goldstone went on, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information
but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
At
this point, any halfway competent and ethical campaign would have contacted the
F.B.I. That’s what the Gore campaign did in 2000 when it
mysteriously received confidential debate materials belonging to the Bush
campaign.
In
President Trump’s world, ethics is for suckers. His son wrote back to Mr.
Goldstone, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer” —
when he probably assumed it would do the most damage.
On
June 9, the younger Mr. Trump met at Trump Tower with the Russian
lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has connections to the Kremlin. Also
attending were members of the Trump inner circle — Paul Manafort, the campaign
chairman, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior
White House adviser. (Mr. Kushner initially failed to mention this
meeting, and several others with Russian
officials, on his security clearance application.)
What
happened at the meeting? Nothing, according to Donald Trump Jr., who said it
had occurred “before the current Russian fever was in vogue.” Less than two
months later, CNN asked him about allegations that Russia was trying to help
his father’s campaign. “It’s disgusting, it’s so phony,” Mr. Trump said then. “I can’t think of bigger lies.”
He
might try thinking a little harder, especially about his multiple conflicting accounts of what transpired
with Ms. Veselnitskaya. On Sunday, for example, he said that he had told Mr.
Manafort and Mr. Kushner “nothing of the substance” of the meeting in advance.
But the subject line of the exchange with Mr. Goldstone, which Mr. Trump
forwarded to both men, read, “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential.”
Donald
Trump Jr. appears to be in real legal jeopardy. Federal campaign finance law prohibits political
campaigns from soliciting any “thing of value” from foreign nationals. By that
standard, Mr. Trump’s acceptance of the offer to see Ms. Veselnitskaya
certainly looks bad. Any charges along these lines could be filed by Robert
Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, or by the
Justice Department under the direction of Deputy Attorney General Rod
Rosenstein, who took over all Russia-related matters after Attorney General
Jeff Sessions recused himself in March.
Meanwhile,
Republicans in Congress are maintaining their head-between-the-knees position
as the Trump plane spirals downward. Senator Orrin Hatch said attention to the
emails was “overblown” and called Donald Trump Jr. a “ very nice young man.”
Vice
President Mike Pence tried to vault himself as far as possible from the mess.
He was “not aware of the meeting,” his press secretary said, and is “not focused” on
“stories about the time before he joined the ticket.”
And
what of the president? Mr. Goldstone ended his email to the younger Mr. Trump
by saying, “I can also send this info to your father” through his personal
assistant. Donald Trump Jr. has flatly denied that his father had any knowledge
of the meeting, but that’s hard to believe given who was in attendance, and
impossible to accept given how untruthful the younger Mr. Trump has been.
On
Tuesday, President Trump was uncharacteristically subdued on social media. He
offered only a bloodless note of support for Donald Jr. in a statement released
by his press office: “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his
transparency.” But transparency is one of the many things, along with
credibility, that this administration lacks. So when Donald Trump Jr. claims
that he’s released the “full email chain,” the question has to be, what else
are you hiding?
2.
G-20 minus 1: How Trump changed the nature of American
leadership at global summit
USA TODAY July 9, 2017
Trump
sits out on G-20 climate agreement
All the leaders at the
G-20 summit reaffirmed their solidarity with the Paris Climate Agreement,
except President Trump.
HAMBURG
— President Trump attended the G-20 summit in Hamburg, but he wasn't really a
part of it.
Instead,
Trump used the conference space generously provided by his host, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, to conduct a series of his own mini-summits —
separate on-on-one "meetings on the sidelines" with other world
leaders where Trump pursued his own agenda.
He
met with Russian President Vladimir Putin about his interference in western
elections. He met with leaders in Asia about North Korea. And he met with
trading partners throughout the world in a two-day binge of talks.
This
focus on one-on-one meetings, which ended with Trump declaring newly created
great friendships with world leaders, meant that he often stepped away from the
bigger meetings. On Saturday, he left his daughter Ivanka
to represent the United States on the floor of the G-20 while he met
with the president of Indonesia.
And
when the rest of the summit agreed that the Paris climate agreement was
"irreversible," Trump withheld U.S. support for that part of
the final communique.
The
dynamic was apparent from the very beginning, while posing for the "family
photo" with other world leaders. It was Merkel taking center stage, her
bright red jacket standing out all the more from a sea of black business
suits.
Trump
was on the outskirts, unable to shove his way through the crowd to get to the
center as he did with the Montenegrin prime minister at the NATO summit in
May. Instead, he was in the corner, engaged in small talk with French President
Emmanuel Macron.
It
was a visual representation of Trump's brand of diplomacy. While he loves to
command a room, he prefers to work one-on-one as opposed to groups.
If
President George W. Bush was accused of being a unilateral president, too often
going it alone on the world stage; and President Barack Obama was a
multilateral president, seeking broad consensus on issues like climate change,
trade and security —then Trump is a bilateral president, seeking to make
deals one at a time.
That
preference for bilateral relationships is based on personality, experience in
business and a philosophy that puts narrow national interests ahead of
broader global concerns like wealth inequality, refugee resettlement and
climate change.
It's
a worldview Trump articulated in his speech in Warsaw on Thursday, where he
extolled the virtues of national sovereignty, self-determination, strong
borders and nations paying for their own defense.
While
he pledged to defend NATO allies from attack — something he pointedly did
not do at the NATO summit — he also expressed a deep skepticism of
international bureaucracies.
Bureaucracies
like the G-20. the group of 19 of the largest national economies (plus the
European Union) founded in 1999 to address the world's most pressing economic
issues.
Trump
now has three major foreign summits under his belt, plus two other smaller
group meetings in Saudi Arabia and Poland. While he often seemed on the
sidelines, aides say Trump will not "lead from behind."
Trump
is driven by a "clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a 'global
community' but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and
businesses engage and compete for advantage," national security adviser H.R.
McMaster and economic adviser Gary Cohn wrote in the Wall Street Journal after his first foreign
trip.
3.
With EU Deal, Japan Sends Powerful Message on Free Trade
The
Japan-EU deal is a political win for Abe and a repudiation of Trump-style
protectionism.
The Diplomat July 08, 2017
The
Japan-European Union (EU) trade pact has sent a powerful message to the rest
of
the world, amid concerns over growing protectionism. For Japan though, it could
just be the start of a record year for free trade deals, amid pressure from
Washington for bilateral talks.
On
Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, European Council President Donald
Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker shook hands in
Brussels on a free trade deal encompassing nearly 30 percent of global gross
domestic product (GDP) and 9 percent of the world’s population.
“Japan
and the EU demonstrated our strong political will to raise the flag of free
trade high when there are moves toward protectionism in the world. It’s a
result we should be proud of and this is a powerful message to the world,” Abe
said at a press conference.
Tusk
concurred, saying, “Although some are saying that the time of isolationism and
disintegration is coming again, we are demonstrating that this is not the
case.”
Reached
before the start of Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Germany, the deal contrasts
with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy, under which the
Trump administration has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
pact and sought to renegotiate other deals bilaterally.
Politically,
the pact is a boost for Abe after having championed the TPP, helping to expand
exports without threatening a major backlash from the domestic farm lobby. For
the EU, it has demonstrated the continued benefits of membership amid the
existential threat posed by Brexit and other isolationist movements.
Reached
after four years of negotiations, the Japan-EU pact will eliminate 99 percent
of tariffs between the two partners, while also expanding markets for services
and government procurement along with enhancing regulatory cooperation.
Among
its economic benefits, the deal could boost EU
exports to Japan by 34 percent and Japanese exports to the EU by 29
percent. The EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) could grow by 0.76 percentage
point and Japan’s by 0.29 percentage point. The EU also estimates it will save
1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) a year in customs duties, growing its exports to
Japan to more than 100 billion euro.
Japanese
food lovers are set to benefit, with Tokyo to establish a low-tariff import
quota for European cheeses such as Camembert, while eliminating tariffs on
European wine imports and phasing out tariffs on goods such as chocolate and
pasta.
In
return, the EU agreed to phase out its 10 percent tariff on Japanese passenger
cars over seven years, as well as immediately abolishing tariffs on Japanese
autoparts. Brussels also agreed to eliminate immediately tariffs on Japanese
beef, sake, whiskey and wine as well as electronics.
According
to Japan’s NHK World, Japanese wine shops were considering price
cuts on French wine following the deal, while autoparts makers and sake brewers
were also eyeing its benefits.
However,
not all businesses surveyed welcomed the agreement. Akedori Cheese Factory’s
Madoka Sato said cheaper European imports would increase competitive pressure
on the firm.
“All
we have to do is to continue improving the quality of our cheeses, and provide
new flavors to customers who want our goods,” Sato told the Japanese broadcaster.
Shares
in food-related stocks on the Tokyo Stock Exchange fell Friday, amid
expectations of rising imports damaging domestic producers’ earnings. Among the
losers were Megmilk Snow Brand and Rokko Butter, which dropped around 2
percent, while shares in Nippon Flour Mills hit a one-month low.
The
Japan-EU agreement will “lend momentum to negotiations for the TPP11 and other
EPAs [economic partnership agreements],” with investors pricing in increased
food imports, Daiwa SB Investments’ Soichiro Monji told the Nikkei.
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