Is world using US as a 'piggy bank'? The tensions behind a Trump comment.
Amid a flurry of stern and sometimes vitriolic rhetoric after a weekend summit of large democracies, one comment by President Trump stood out as a pointed rebuke of America’s longtime trading partners.
“We're like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Mr. Trump said. “And that ends.”
His words only seemed to stiffen the determination of longtime allies to resist his call for dramatic concessions.
Big European economies, plus Canada and Japan, all were rolling out retaliatory responses to Trump’s imposition of steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, amid allegations that they’re helping to fuel a global metals glut. And the use of a national-security rationale for those tariffs was deemed “kind of insulting” by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
So what does Trump’s
Reality vs. rhetoricMilitary concernsPerils of go-it-aloneTrade math