Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and British royal family member Princess Anne were all caught on video having a hearty laugh at President Donald Trump during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in London, and Trump’s feelings were apparently hurt. After the video was released he cancelled the traditional post-summit news conference and returned to Washington earlier than planned, telling the international media that Trudeau was “two-faced” on his way out.

Nobody likes being laughed at, but Trump is even touchier about it than most. He likes to dish out ridicule of his political opponents and critics, and he always kills with his insult comic material at the campaign rallies and the fans always relish his schoolyard taunts on “Twitter,” but he can’t abide any kidding in return. By now he should be used to it, as all the late night comics and barroom wags and highfalutin intellectuals at the faculty parties having been making great fun of him since long before he ran for president, yet he continues to find time in a president’s busy schedule to lash back via “Twitter” at any B-list celebrity who jibes about his haircut or girth or unresolved trade wars.

By Now Trump should also know that pretty much all of those Euro-weenie heads of state and their fancy-pants diplomatic corps also find him ridiculous, as do all the late night comics and barroom wags and highfalutin intellectuals in their countries. They find him vulgar and bullying and poorly-spoken and generally ill-bred and ill-equipped for the office of Leader of the Free World, just as those snobs on Manhattan’s elite social scene did when Trump moved there from his father’s working class empire in Queens.

For now Trump can claim some measure of revenge, as he won the support of the great unwashed and aggrieved white working class beyond the Hudson and is currently president of the world’s most powerful nation, and all those East Side snobs and Euro-weenies are not, but he is by objective measurement the most laughed-at man on the planet. They all laughed at Christopher Columbus, Edison, the Wright brothers and Marconi, as the old Gershwin song notes, but it’s unclear at the moment if Trump will join their historically vindicated company. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown, as we remember some wit saying, and history might do the same to Trump.

Trudeau and Macron are both having their own political problems, but no one outside their countries cares much about that, and their domestic audiences were probably not at all offended they shared a laugh or two about Trump. Johnson is an unabashed nationalist with a bad haircut and bombastically populist political style, and has been considered a natural ally of Trump, but the American president is so unpopular the United Kingdom that Johnson pleaded the American president not to endorse him, and he probably won’t suffer any political consequences for being caught laughing at his erstwhile good American friend. As for the Queen’s eldest daughter, we’re told it’s the only time she’s ever been caught laughing on videotape.

Trump will rouse his raucous rally crowds by shouting that those worthless European so-called allies are laughing at them, not him, and nourish their suspicion that all the swells in Manhattan and around the world are out to get them. He’ll probably get some laughs from it, too, but if he needs to survive the coming days Trump must become more inured to the laughter from the rest of the world.

— Bud Norman

The Art of the Unfinished Deal

Monday’s news was  full of the usual ominous legal developments regarding the “Russia thing,” as well the continuing fallout from President Donald Trump’s petty ongoing feud with the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, but there was also a rare story about actual policy matters. Trump has made some progress in his trade negotiations with Mexico, and naturally he was eager to overstate the accomplishment.

The White House press corps was invited to listen in on a congratulatory phone call between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and although there were a few embarrassing moments of silence while the staff scrambled to get the line working, both presidents praised what they’ve agreed to thus far and lavishly praised one another. Nieto also said three times in the brief call that he was hopeful Canada will also join in the agreement, which seemed to annoy Trump, and by the end it was clear that a deal had yet to be sealed.

The good news that a more cautious president would have modestly touted is that Mexico has agreed to new trade rules for automobiles, intellectual property rights and labor regulations. Such tweaks to current North American Free Trade Agreement are likely to keep some car-making jobs in the United States and Mexico rather than Asia, make it harder for foreign competitors to steal corporate America’s innovations, although Trump didn’t make a big deal of it many Mexican workers will get a big raise and safer working conditions.

The bad news that a more honest president would have admitted is that the new rules will likely make your next new car more expensive, China and the rest of the worst thieves of America’s inventions aren’t involved in the deal at all, and that the vast non-automotive sectors of the Mexican economy might take a hard hit that sends more Mexicans heading to the cross the border in search of work. Trump didn’t get the concessions he wanted on various tariffs, and he made concessions to Mexico about the length of time before he could renege on the whole deal and start all over again, but he could have made a case that incremental progress had nonetheless been made.

Trump has an unfortunate tendency to spike the football and do his end zone dance just short of the goal line, however, and on Monday he was boasting a great that’s far from done. As much as Trump hates it, NAFTA is still a ratified-by-the-Senate and backed by the full faith of the American government treaty, and Canada is a signatory to that treaty, and given the current state of relations with both trading partners since Trump’s election working out all the details is bound to be tricky. On December 1 Nieto will turn power over to President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and although Obrador was consulted in the negotiations he won office on a promise to take a harder stand against Trump, so things need to be wrapped up quickly. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will also have something to say about it, and so far he’s taken a hard stand in the trade war Trump initiated.

Whatever deal Trump eventually gets will also have to be ratified by the Senate, and the mid-term elections in November could well further complicate that always complicated process.

Still, incremental progress in a long, hard process is an achievement worth noting, and we note that the stock markets were pleased to see a slight lessening of the trade war tensions. It’s not enough to crowed out all the rest of the news, though, and Trump isn’t the sort to make such modest boasts.

— Bud Norman