Bill Carmichael: Donald Trump won't mind being Billy No Mates at G7 summit

Six of the planned guests have fallen out with the seventh, and have vowed they won’t be his friend and threaten to gang up on him.

It is the sort of thing that gives parents a headache, but this time the petty bickering is between the leaders of the world’s biggest economies – the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy plus the EU.

The so-called G7 gathers in the Canadian town of La Malbaie in Quebec today for a summit expected to be fraught with difficulties.

Much of the ire is directed at one man – yes, you guessed it, the Billy No Mates of international politics, Donald Trump – after his decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports infuriated the rest of the world.

Now, I think protectionism is a bad thing – it impoverishes both sides 
of the ensuing trade war. It is the
main reason I couldn’t support Trump during the US presidential campaign in 2016.

But one thing we have learned from Trump is – uniquely among politicians – he keeps his campaign promises, whether that is pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord or moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And sure enough on the campaign trail Trump promised to impose steel and aluminium tariffs to protect American jobs – and that is exactly what he has done. It may be the wrong thing to do – and I think it is – but no one should be surprised that Trump has delivered on another promise.

And isn’t it a bit rich for the EU – the largest and most ruthless protectionist cartel on the planet – to be whining about Trump’s actions now?

For example, the notoriously corrupt Common Agricultural Policy, which gobbles up more than £50bn a year in European taxpayers’ money, is deliberately designed to impoverish poor farmers in the developing world by preventing them from selling cheap food
to customers in the West and then dumping subsidised surpluses on their markets. Wicked doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Anyway, I don’t imagine it will upset Trump in the slightest being in the minority of one. It was also six against one at the last G7 summit in Italy last year when Trump was criticised for pulling out of the Paris climate accords. It is water off a duck’s back.

Indeed why should he worry? Despite pretty much universal condemnation from the chattering classes, everything 
is chugging along quite tickety-boo. 
Unlike the sclerotic eurozone, where even in the so-called powerhouse of Germany economic growth is stalling, the US economy is zipping along at something close to three per cent.

Trump’s tax cuts have proved incredibly popular and unemployment is at an 18-year low. Compare that to high taxes and persistently high levels of unemployment, particularly amongst the young, in much of Europe.

Most significantly, unemployment among black people in the US is at its lowest since records began. A black person in the US is far more likely to be in a paying job than an Italian, a Spaniard or a Greek in Europe. Indeed, Trump has done more to help black Americans than Obama ever did.

On the international stage, Trump could be on the cusp of a remarkable
deal with communist North Korea at a summit planned between the President and Kim Jong-un in Singapore next
week.

If Trump manages to de-nuclearise
the region, we may finally have a US President worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

So expect the world’s leaders to gang up on Trump in Canada today – and for it not to matter a jot. Neither will Trump worry much about the tediously inevitable protests by Canadian left-wingers. Their views simply don’t matter.

What matters to Trump is his popularity among voters in the US – and here we have witnessed dramatic increases in his approval ratings over recent months.

So it appears that keeping your promises is proving very popular with voters. Who knew?

Perhaps we could persuade our political leaders in the UK to try it some day?