{"id":170611,"date":"2018-07-12T00:31:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T04:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=170611"},"modified":"2018-07-12T00:31:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T04:31:05","slug":"trudeau-trump-talk-trade-during-sideline-meeting-at-nato-summit-in-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/12\/trudeau-trump-talk-trade-during-sideline-meeting-at-nato-summit-in-brussels\/","title":{"rendered":"Trudeau, Trump talk trade during sideline meeting at NATO summit in Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Trudeau did not\u2014 have an official bilateral meeting with Trump on Wednesday, but did have a conversation with the U.S. president \u201con the margins\u201d of the NATO summit, said a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office. (Photo: Justin Trudeau\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BRUSSELS \u2014 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to steer clear of Donald Trump’s blast radius Wednesday as the two leaders converged for the first day of the NATO leaders’ summit, opting to meet informally to discuss North American trade irritants instead of the burning issue of defence spending.<\/p>\n

But for anyone hoping to see sparks fly at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the U.S. president did not disappoint, complaining anew about defence spending even as he endorsed a joint communique supporting current commitments, and pointedly slamming a German natural gas pipeline deal he says has left the country \u201ctotally controlled\u201d and \u201ccaptive to Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trudeau did not\u2014 have an official bilateral meeting with Trump on Wednesday, but did have a conversation with the U.S. president \u201con the margins\u201d of the NATO summit, said a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s Office.<\/p>\n

The conversation focused on trade, including efforts to revamp the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement and the ramifications for those talks of Mexico’s presidential election, from which left-leaning populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador emerged victorious.<\/p>\n

The conversation was \u201cpositive,\u201d one official said. But Trudeau appeared to be far from Trump’s orbit during the traditional gathering of leaders for the NATO family photo op and ceremony, standing quietly to the side as Trump chatted with Britain’s Theresa May, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel.<\/p>\n

Trump held several official bilateral meetings, some 2,000 journalists following his every move, while Trudeau held only one: a talk with the prime minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, whose country is a partner nation to NATO.<\/p>\n

The only time the Canadian prime minister pulled focus was during an early question-and-answer session with NATO delegates.<\/p>\n

There, he announced that Canada will assume command of a new NATO training mission in Iraq \u2014 a deployment of 250 Canadian Armed Forces personnel, aimed in part at staving off Trump’s complaints that Canada and other NATO allies are not doing enough to contribute to their NATO defence commitments.<\/p>\n

Trudeau portrayed himself as a kind of counterweight to Trump’s protectionist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, promoting the idea that Canada remains a refuge for migrants and that NATO countries must not only build military capacity, but also build societies that are \u201cbased on values and not identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose kinds of principles, I think, are going to be extraordinarily important in the 21st century as we get flows of migrations, people looking for better lives, people fleeing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to start thinking about how we create societies that look at different stories as opportunities to learn and grow within your societies, rather than trying to keep the challenges of the world outside of your borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of \u201chow to be open\u201d is something NATO and the developed world will have to continue to grapple with in the coming years, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, we need to take care of the poverty and challenges we have at home, each of us \u2014 but we also need to look at what we do to alleviate stress, tensions, misery around the world, because if we don’t, the trend lines we’ll be on as a world will leave us all poorer, poorer off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the day, NATO leaders issued an early final communique, in which they reaffirmed the alliance’s \u201cunwavering commitment\u201d to see member states dedicate two per cent of GDP on defence spending by 2024, acknowledging growth in military and defence spending among many ally nations.<\/p>\n

That came despite Trump pushing NATO leaders behind closed doors, unsuccessfully, to increase the NATO defence spending target to four per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n

In a move that echoed his contentious departure from the G7 summit in Quebec, Trump later posted a tweet that appeared to contradict the communique, insisting countries should \u201cpay two per cent of GDP immediately, not by 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

The summit wraps up Thursday after one more day of meetings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS \u2014 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to steer clear of Donald Trump’s blast radius Wednesday as the two leaders …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":166620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[14770,9745,1058],"class_list":["post-170611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","tag-nato","tag-trudeau","tag-trump","mauthors-teresa-wright","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}