BRICS Summit Highlights Trump's Deepening Isolation on Trade and Foreign Policy
Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping both fired broadsides at President Donald Trump Tuesday during a summit of emerging market economies that underscored the growing divide between global superpowers on trade, climate and foreign policy.
Putin called the U.S. approach towards North Korea, which emphasizes economic sanctions against the rogue nation following its repeated tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic weaponry, "useless and ineffective" and stressed the need for security guarantees to Pyongyang in order to cool the region's simmering tensions.
"They'll eat grass, but they won't abandon their program unless they feel secure," Putin was reported to have said, according to Bloomberg, on the sidelines of a summit of so-called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and other emerging market economies in the southeast port city of Xiamen.
His comments followed a thinly-veiled critique from China's Xi, who warned the "Dialogue of Emerging Market and Developing Countries" summit that while the global economy has shown signs of improvement, "some countries have become more inward looking and their desire to participate in global development cooperation has decreased."
The timing of the criticism could also prove important as Trump attempts to build international support for North Korea sanctions and threatened to cut trade ties with any country that does business with Pyongyang.
Xi was also reported to have met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto after China's vice trade minister, Wang Shouwen, said the world's second-largest economy would challenge protectionist trade policies and was open to a potential free-trade deal with Mexico.
The summit's overall message, and the combative tone of its most important speakers, suggests world leaders are growing impatient with Trump's "American First" agenda and his constant references to "unfair" trade deals. His decision to withdraw from a global accord on climate change earlier this year was also referenced by Xi, who said that "multi-lateral trade negotiations make progress only with great difficulty and the implementation of the Paris Agreement has met resistance."
The pushback also comes as representatives from Canada, the United States and Mexico conclude a second round of talks in that country's capital aimed at re-working the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump has threatened to terminate.
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