Trump Styles EU ‘Foe’ to America before Meeting with Putin

Trump Styles EU ‘Foe’ to America before Meeting with Putin

The US President headed to Finland’s capital Helsinki for his meeting there with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

US President Donald Trump has taken a new shot at a key Western entity and crucial US allies, the European Union and its member states, by declaring the EU a “foe” of America.

Trump named the European Union when asked to identify his “biggest foe globally right now” in an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Jeff Glor in Scotland, CBS News reports.

“I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade,“ the US President said.

“Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive,” Trump said at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland.

“I respect the leaders of those countries. But, in a trade sense, they’ve really taken advantage of us and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren’t paying their bills,” he added.

Trump’s comments about the EU being “a foe” to America come against the backdrop of his previous threats to introduce higher levies on imported cars from the EU, and the EU reacting by threatening to hit back US exports worth USD 294 billion with tariffs.

Other recent events during which Trump had shaken the West included last week’s contentious NATO summit in which he lambasted Germany for being “controlled” by Russia, and his visit in London where he seemed to embarrass British Prime Minister Theresa May with respect to her Brexit plan.

The US President headed to Finland’s capital Helsinki on Sunday for his meeting there with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

“Nothing bad is going to come out of it, and maybe some good will come out,” Trump said in his interview, making it clear he had “low expectations” for the summit with Putin.

In his CBS News interview, he also kept criticizing the continuing investigation in the US of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections and the allegations of collusion by the Trump campaign.

“I think we’re greatly hampered by this whole witch hunt that’s going on in the United States. I think it hurts our relationship with Russia. I actually think it hurts our relationship with a lot of countries. I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on,” Trump stated.

(Banner image: Pixabay)

Ivan Dikov is a Bulgarian journalist and author. He studied political science / international relations and history at Dartmouth College and later in Sofia, in the Eastern Balkans. He’s served for five years as the editor-in-chief of Bulgaria’s largest English-language media – Novinite.com. As a freelancer, he has collaborated with media from the US, the UK, Germany, and Australia.

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