Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 24, 2017
Justin Trudeau heads to Europe for NATO and G7 summits, where Trump’s ‘fireworks’ remain an expectation
May 25, 2016
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau heads to Europe this week for the NATO and G7 summits, where global leaders are trying to figure out exactly how the world works now that U.S. President Donald Trump is at the table.
The future of military alliances, the fight against climate change and even free trade all hang in the balance as the new man in the White House sits down and lets them all know his plans — or maybe not.
“Predicting what this president does would be virtually impossible,” said David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, delivering a common answer to the question of what to expect this week.
March 25, 2014
“Fireworks would be the baseline expectation of some sort.”
On Thursday, Trump, in the midst of his first foreign trip as U.S. president, will sit down with Trudeau and other leaders at the NATO summit at the group’s new headquarters in Brussels.
On Friday and Saturday, Trudeau and Trump will be in Taormina, a resort town in Sicily, for the G7 Summit.
John Kirton, director of the G8 Research Group at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, said this smaller forum with lots of opportunities for face-to-face talks is made for someone like Trump, who professes his passion for making deals.
July 27, 2006
Kirton said he expects the talks to focus on trying to convince Trump not to go through with his pledge to back out of the UN Paris Agreement on climate change, the role of China in the world and international trade.
But Kirton said the tenor of these talks might depend on how things go in Brussels. If things don’t go well at the NATO summit, the G7 meeting will have to be rapidly reconfigured into a repair job, he said. (Source: Toronto Star)
Regina Leader-Post, May 25, 2017