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AFP
La Malbaie, Canada
President Donald Trump drove the wedge splitting Washington from its Western allies even deeper on Friday with a shock call for Russia to be readmitted to the G7 club of nations.
As the heads of the top industrialized democracies embarked on the two-day G7 summit in rural Quebec, European leaders warned that Trump's stance on trade, the climate, Iran and -- now -- Russia sets him apart.
Already angered by Trump's imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum -- and planning to respond with measures of their own that could spiral into a trade war -- the allies now fear a rift in the united western front against Russian aggression.
Before jumping on Air Force One to fly to Canada, which is hosting the summit in La Malbaie north of Quebec City, Trump called for a return to the body's pre-2014"G8"formula.
"They threw Russia out. They should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table,"the US leader said before boarding the presidential jet.
Moscow was expelled from the rich nations club, which sees itself as a guarantor of rules-based order and the global economy, over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.
While Italy's new premier Giuseppe Conte, head of a populist coalition, had suggested he supports Trump's call, French President Emmanuel Macron assembled the European G7 leaders before the summit and confirmed unanimous opposition.
Donald Tusk, the former Polish leader attending as president of the European Council, saw the call for Russia's return as part of a raft of unilateral measures imposed by Trump that have driven Washington apart from US allies.
"It is evident that the American president and the rest of the group continue to disagree on trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal,"Tusk admitted.
Tusk warned that"the rules-based international order is being challenged, quite surprisingly not by the usual suspects but by its main architect and guarantor, the US."
And he said Trump's determination to bait his allies over trade and diplomatic engagements"would only play into the hands of those who seek a new post-West order where liberal democracy and fundamental freedoms would cease to exist."Trump was the last G7 leader to arrive Friday and on Saturday, he will probably be the first to leave, in a hurry to move on to his nuclear summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Singapore.
Trade battle lines were drawn even before he arrived in a series of dueling tweets and statements between Trump and his onetime friend Macron.
With unmistakable symbolism, the fractious Western democracies were meeting on the same day that China's President Xi Jinping welcomed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to Beijing.
Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the G7 nations are split over trade, climate and multilateral engagements such as the Iran nuclear deal.
And at the same time, the US president seems more at home with autocrats than with Washington's traditional allies.
The"America First"president's broadside before leaving Washington reinforced predictions that the Quebec G7 would be the first such summit to end without an agreed joint statement.
"All of these countries have been taking advantage of the United States on trade,"he said before flying out.
"We have massive trade deficits with almost every country. We will straighten that out. And I'll tell you what, it's what I do.
"It won't even be hard and in the end, we'll all get along."
