Grasping Reality with Both Hands

...Matthew Choi noted, “It’s unusual for a U.S. president to draw unintentional laughs at a gathering of world leaders, and Trump has long complained that foreign governments are laughing at the U.S. for what he views as weak policies on trade and other issues.” The New York Times' Mark Landler tweeted, “The laughter at Trump’s UN speech underscores a hard reality for him: After 20 months of bombast, he’s now viewed by many foreign officials as a source of humor rather than fear.” The spontaneous laughter clearly rattled Trump. What should really rattle him, however, is that in the 24 hours surrounding his U.N. General Assembly speech, the rest of the world was finding ways to move while Donald Trump was standing still.

Consider that the other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal agreed to create a structure to work around reimposed U.S. financial sanctions.... This is about the European Union, Russia and China devising a payments and settlement system that bypasses the United States. The more adept that these countries become at circumventing U.S. capital markets, the more it erodes the power of U.S. financial statecraft. China is not only trying to blunt U.S. financial power, however. In the wake of U.S. withdrawal from activities at the United Nations, China is filling the vacuum.... In part China is filling a space created by the withdrawal of the US from bodies such as the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council and the UN’s cultural arm, Unesco.... Whatever objections the Trump administration might have with UNESCO and other U.N. agencies, its strategy of withdrawal has accomplished little other than ceding influence over these organizations to China. Meanwhile, U.S. allies continue to resist the Trump administration’s pressure to make trade concession...

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