The president of the United States believes that isolating the US from other countries is the best way for the North American country

On Sunday, July 15, President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in what would be a summit that drew attention because of the immense tension between the two nations over the alleged Russian inherence in the 2016 presidential election, in which Trump won. However, beyond that point, situations such as Syria, bilateral trade and the European Union extended the spectrum of tension, which is not only with Russia, as China and the European Union have also seen their relations with the American power threatened.

Leer en español. Estados Unidos: Trump se aleja cada vez más de la Unión Europea, Rusia y China

Only the same day he met Putin, Trump assured that China, the European Union and Russia were "enemies" of the United States. In that interview for CBS, Trump said that "it does not mean that they are bad (…) means they are competitive." For Trump, considering them enemies arises mainly from what happened recently in commercial matters, where tariffs have been imposed on US, Chinese, and European imports, all for the decisions that have emerged from the White House.

United States and the European Union: tension on several fronts

The United States has clashed in recent months with Europeans over trade issues: "I have many problems with the European Union. I am the representative of the United States, it is a very unfair situation. We can not introduce our product (in the EU), it's very, very hard," Trump told British channel ITV. Trump for that interview said that while European products enter the United States with low taxes or even without them, American products do not enjoy the same facilities.

Read also: The European Union: Is it a commercial enemy of the United States or only Trump’s? 

For the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the tense relationship between the United States and Europe is due to the decisions of Donald Trump against the common good; he said in the letter he sent to European leaders who would be in Brussels for the NATO summit: "despite our tireless efforts to keep the West together, transatlantic relations are under immense pressure due to the policies of the president Trump (…) you have to prepare for the worst scenario".

Russia and the European Union: another front of global tension

In 1994, the European Union and Russia signed the Association and Cooperation Agreement (ACT) which entered IGNORE INTO force in 1997 and since then has improved relations between the bloc and Russia. In 2003, at the St. Petersburg Summit, the two sides began to look for ways to deepen cooperation: economy; freedom, security and justice; and research and education were the central axes for this work. Russia is the fourth trade partner of the EU (it was the third before the adoption of economic sanctions in 2014) and the EU is Russia's first trading partner. The main exports of the EU to Russia are machinery, transport equipment, chemical products, medicines and agricultural products. Those from Russia to the EU are raw materials and fuels, especially oil (crude and refined) and gas.

During the two years following the application of these sanctions, Russian imports fell by about 44% according to Mira Milosevich-Juaristi of the Elcano Royal Institute. The main products affected were foods such as meat and vegetables. European imports, although they were also affected, were not affected to the same extent, fuels, main imports were not affected. "The EU's dependence on Russian oil and gas imports provides the backdrop for political concerns related to the security of energy supply," says Milosevich-Juaristi, stressing that this dependence will be continuous.

For Donald Trump this dependence does not agree with the European concern of the American approach to Russia, and that I see it at the dinner with NATO members, where I stress that Germany is Russia's prisoner on fuel.

For the European Union, says Mira Milosevich-Juaristi, the real obstacle to a better relationship with Russia is that it wants to regain its circles of influence with neighboring countries, "defined by the Kremlin as an international order in which the sovereignty of each The country must be preserved not only from military and political interference but also from what is perceived as an imposition of the West, as stated by Russian Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov. "

China: the last link

For China, US decisions are worrisome, the newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported on June 24, mentioning that the White House aims to limit Chinese investment in the technology sector that is based in the United States. The representatives of the European Union met with Chinese officials in the seventh round of economic and trade dialogues in Beijing in June, where they strongly criticized the US position of protectionism and isolationism. For the two blocks, European and Chinese, the US measures are against free trade.

The United States on July 5 applied a package of sanctions to China worth 34,000 million dollars, China responded with a similar measure. Again the United States responded by applying 10% tariffs to Chinese imports, the Asian giant decided to take this fight to the WTO. So far the European Union and China have responded to Trump's commercial attacks.

LatinAmerican Post | Carlos Eduardo Gómez Avella

Translated from "Estados Unidos: Trump se aleja cada vez más de la Unión Europea, Rusia y China"