Free Republic

After an opening day dominated by trade talk, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will shift the G7 conversation to other pressing global issues on Saturday — climate change and empowering women — but at least one leader has opted to skip part of the day's meetings. U.S. President Donald Trump will leave La Malbaie, Que., early Saturday before G7 leaders are scheduled to have a working session on protecting the world's oceans and redoubling efforts to stave off catastrophic climate change. He will, however, take part in the gender-focused breakfast session billed by Canadian officials as a chance for leaders to...

“I am in agreement with President Trump,” Mr. Conte tweeted Friday. “Russia should reenter the G8. It is in everyone’s best interests.” Conte’s comment followed remarks by President Trump earlier on Friday regarding Russia’s role in the group of leading industrialized nations (G7). “With that being said, Russia should be in this meeting,” Trump said of the G7 summit, which begins Friday in Quebec. “Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?” “Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run,” Trump said. “And in...

President Donald Trump plans to depart from this weekend's Group of 7 summit in Canada several hours early, the White House announced Thursday, punctuating an explosion of acrimony between Trump and his foreign counterparts on the eve of the talks. The White House said Trump would depart mid-morning on Saturday, skipping sessions on climate change and the environment. An aide will take his place, the White House said.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) excoriated President Trump on Friday for calling on Russia to be invited back to the Group of Seven, blasting the move as the “antithesis” of principled realism and “a sure path to diminishing America’s leadership in the world.” He became the third Republican senator to condemn Trump’s statement that the G-7, a group of major industrial powers, should not be meeting this weekend in Quebec without Russia. McCain contrasted Trump’s friendly words for Russia to his hard-line negotiating tactics with allies such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union on trade. “The president has inexplicably shown...

The spittle-flecked bon mots and Tweets of Macron and Trudeau don’t seem to be scaring Trump off Word leaders attending today’s 2-day G7 meetings have clambered onto the bandwagon of celebrities and comedians who use pumped up hatred of President Donald Trump—mostly because it’s good for publicity leverage. Stand-up comedians of the day, who know that public displays of Trump hatred will garner them swift attention, are getting to be so many that they could form their own #MeToo initiative.

I know that there are daily prayer threads for the country, but thought it would be nice to draw extra focus on this weekend/week as Trump takes the world stage at the G7 and in Singapore to meet Kim Jong Un. The G7-Summit is already shaping up to be a lion's den of sorts and the meeting with Kim (if all goes as planned) will be a historic and potentially defining moment in Trump's presidency. So my prayer is that by the grace of God, the President is able to withstand all the forces threatening to sabotage his mission and...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he had warned European countries years ago about the risk of the United States imposing its rules on others, and that they were now paying the price for ignoring him. Speaking during an annual live television phone-in with the Russian people, Putin likened the tariffs that Washington imposed last week on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union to economic sanctions. "It appears our partners thought that this would never affect them, this counterproductive politics of restrictions and sanctions. But now we are seeing that this is happening."...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Seven rich nations headed for a summit in Canada on Thursday more divided than at any time in the group’s 42-year history, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies risk causing a global trade war and deep diplomatic schisms. In a bid to rebuild America’s industry, Trump has imposed hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including those from key G7 allies like Canada, Japan and the European Union. He has threatened to use national security laws to do the same for foreign car imports and has walked back on environmental...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she expected “contentious discussions” at a G7 summit this week, given differences with US President Donald Trump on trade, climate and security. Speaking two days before the Canada meeting of the club of major industrialized democracies, Merkel also said the leaders may not necessarily manage to agree on a final joint statement. “I think everyone knows there will be difficult discussions there, because G7 summits deal with the global economy, trade, climate protection, development—and foreign policy,” she told German parliament. […] Merkel vowed to enter the talks “in good faith”, but stressed that...

In a dramatic shift from the Obama era, United States negotiators representing the Trump administration at the G7 summit of health ministers in Milan, Italy have resisted references to climate change, sexual and reproductive rights — including abortion — and universal health care in an agreement set to finalized on Monday. draft communique shared with BuzzFeed News notes that the U.S. demands to strike out all references to “climate change” and “man-made” weather, and “other disasters.” The U.S. is also refusing a reference “to engage in international cooperation to implement the Paris climate agreement,” according to BuzzFeed News. The U.S....

The German chancellor had been hoping to isolate Donald Trump on climate issues at the upcoming G-20 summit in Hamburg. But Merkel’s hoped-for alliance is crumbling, underscoring Germany’s relative political weakness globally. Many countries are wary of angering the United States. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had actually thought that Canada’s young, charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau, could be counted among her reliable partners. Particularly when it came to climate policy. Just two weeks ago, at the G-7 summit in Sicily, he had thrown his support behind Germany. When Merkel took a confrontational approach to U.S. President Donald Trump, Trudeau was...

The latest meeting of what had been the world’s seven major economic powers left no doubt that the United States of America is far more than the foremost among them, and that longstanding differences between them continue to widen. The latest set of reasons for that widening stem from the different ways in which the peoples of Europe and America (and Japan as well) have been reacting to a generation of malfeasance by their transnational ruling class. From Warsaw westward to Tokyo, voters are pushing back against political-economic arrangements that, they believe, have been disenfranchising them, demanding the loosening of...

Crammed on to a ship with a normal capacity of 600, almost 1,500 migrants arrive in Italy after being rescued from rickety vessels in the Mediterranean. Their nightmare ended as they landed in Naples yesterday after being forced to endure an extra two days on board because of the G7 summit in Sicily. The nearest port to where they were picked up was on the island, but the vessel was not allowed to dock there because of the tight security in place for the meeting of world leaders. ** Last week a leaked intelligence report said 6.6million are waiting to...

European countries and major corporations are pressuring President Donald Trump to remain in the Paris climate agreement despite his promises on the campaign trail to withdraw the United States from the Obama-era deal that never gained congressional approval.The Trump administration so far is sticking with being undecided—at least until Trump returns to the United States from his first foreign trip, where on Friday, he’s meeting with Group of Seven ally countries, which support the agreement.Back home, the pressure is growing from multinational corporations, even the energy sector, which have opposed stricter limitations on carbon.Exxon Mobil Corp., once run by Trump’s...

Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned Monday against seeking “simple answers” to complex global issues, a day after suggesting that Europe’s relationship with the U.S. had shifted significantly following NATO and G-7 meetings with President Donald Trump that produced disappointing results. The comments at an election rally Sunday in Bavaria, where Merkel stressed that “we Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands,” were widely seen as acknowledgement from Europe’s most powerful leader of the changing dynamic of trans-Atlantic ties. Her foreign minister, a political rival, upped the rhetoric Monday by declaring that with Trump’s policies, “the West has become...

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel unleashed a volley of criticism against US President Donald Trump, slamming his “short-sighted” policies that have “weakened the West” and hurt European interests. The sharp words from Gabriel came after Trump concluded his first official tour abroad which took him to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Brussels and then Italy for a G7 summit. They also followed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warning on Sunday that the US and Britain may no longer be reliable partners. Germany’s exasperation was laid bare after the G7 summit which wrapped up on Saturday with the US refusing to sign up to upholding...

(CNN)President Donald Trump's first presidential foray onto the international stage should be judged as a success. His visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Belgium and Italy were well managed by the White House and effectively advanced some key foreign policy goals for the new administration. These include rebuilding frayed partnerships in the Middle East and pressuring allies in Europe to invest more in their own defenses; no leader across the Atlantic should be left with any doubt about US expectations of what they need to do to strengthen NATO....[snip] Undoubtedly, his remarks at the NATO headquarters could and should...

Europe "must take its fate into its own hands" faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday. "The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days," Merkel told a crowd...

Did former President Obama try to co-opt media coverage of President Donald Trump's international trip by making Italy his first stop in an all-expenses paid trip around the world? Isn't this the first time that a former president traveled a route nearly parallel with that of the new President? Obama departed for Italy on Friday, one day before the People's President embarked for Saudi Arabia. The Obama private jet was encircled by six Eurofighter Fourth Wing fighter jets en route to Italy for his five day stay at the $15,000 a night Borgo Finocchieto, thirteenth century restored village, owned by...

As the G7 nations met in Sicily to discuss, among other things, what can be done about the mass influx of migrants to Europe and any potential security threat they may pose, they ordered that all migrant boat arrivals be shuffled along to other Italian ports because the arrival of migrants may cause security issues! Apparently, they see the arrival of these migrants as a potential threat and therefore do not want them arriving whilst they could themselves be in danger, but ignore the fact that they have allowed hundreds of thousands to arrive unvetted by this route and will...