Us politics

The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls. But if everybody stops to breathe for a moment, they should stop to recognise that, on this issue, as on so much else, Donald Trump is winning the politics. Call it vice-signalling. The President and Kirstjen Nielsen are making clear that, even if it means being seen to be inhuman, they are taking voter concerns about massive immigration seriously.

The reviews are coming in for Donald Trump’s performance in Singapore and they aren’t pretty. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times says Trump was ‘hoodwinked’. Ari Fleischer, the former press spokesman for George W. Bush, says ‘This feels like the Agreed Framework of the 90s all over again. NK gave its word to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. They never intended to keep their word. And then they broke it.’ And Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst now at the Heritage Foundation, says ‘This is very disappointing. Each of the four main points was in previous documents with NK, some in a stronger, more encompassing way. The denuke

Donald Trump is following through on his threat—or promise, as his voters see it—to impose steep tariffs on foreign goods in the name of supporting American industry, starting with levies of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium imports. Allies and neighbours that had been granted temporary exemptions are now set to feel the brunt of the tariffs: Canada is America’s leading source of foreign steel, and Mexico and the European Union will also feel the pain. They’re all threatening to retaliate, and the press is calling this a trade war. If this is a war, it’s one the United States will win. The thing to

The threat of a global trade war is back. The Trump administration has announced that the US will impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico. The EU is already promising to respond to Trump’s tariffs in kind. It is all too easy to see how this situation escalates. The EU slaps tariffs on bourbon and Harley Davidsons in response, an infuriated Trump then hits a slew of EU products with tariffs and on it goes. The Trump’s administration decision to impose tariffs is a historic mistake. Not only will it make these goods more expensive for the American firms that are using them

So much for the “World Peace” that Donald Trump bragged he would create at the June 12th Singapore summit. In a wildly inappropriate letter that veered between a bullying and lachrymose tone, Trump bowed to the inevitable in canceling the summit with Kim Jong-un. He had to do it before Kim did. Already Kim had the upper hand. Trump’s impetuous decision gave the Supreme Leader, as the administration had taken to calling him, the validation the regime was seeking for decades. Now it will not be back to the future. South Korea isn’t going to readopt a tough posture of “maximum pressure” toward the North. Score one for Kim. But another winner

Washington, DC It was a petulant Donald Trump who appeared at a White House press briefing on Tuesday with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. When a reporter asked if Trump had confidence in the deputy attorney-general, Rod Rosenstein, given the latest complicated twists in the investigation into collusion with Russia, Trump snapped that Moon didn’t want to hear about it. But it won’t be easy for Trump to dismiss these questions as piffle for long. Even as the old boy tries to pose as a great statesman, tales of his past shenanigans keep mounting. The latest is an exposé in New York magazine that suggests the Republican fund-raiser Elliott