President Trump to Western Europe
President Trump is fulfilling what Candidate Trump promised. We are not the nation that will any longer be the lackey of Western Europe and carry their burdens while their socialist policies destroy the economic vibrancy of the past. We will no longer carry them on our soldiers.
The President will place tariffs on imported steel so our American steel industry can once again prosper. And Canada has not been exempted from America protecting its workers. The Commerce Department announced in April that we would add 3 to 24% in tariffs on softwood lumber from Canada to protect our own lumber industry. On June 26th, the Commerce Department announced 7.7% for anti-dumping tariffs to deter the dumping of products in the United States.
We left the Paris Accord because we would pay $100 billion a year, place restrictions on our environmental policy that would result in less than a 1 degree drop in temperature by 2060, and exempt China and India from the requirements until 2030 even though they are the culprits with polluted environments.
So, let the European sycophants be upset. Naturally they do not like losing the security blanket of the United States footing the bill for countries that have failing economies. Obama dragged us into that malaise of European collectivism and now we are establishing our own “New World Order.” This is not the one articulated by President George H.W. Bush that was to be a global economy. This is the one that will bring the United States back to its premiere position in the world and properly show concern for American workers and American values, rather than the failing policies of western Europe.
Here is some of the whining from European “leaders:”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Europe must “take our fate into our own hands” and stop “glossing over” clear differences.
French President Emmanuel Macron: He criticized those like President Trump who do not support multilateral institutions and instead pursue their own nationalist interests. \
Macron said: “Our world has never been so divided. Centrifugal forces have never been so powerful. Our common goals have never been so threatened. We need better coordination, more coordination. We need those organizations that were created out of the Second World War. Otherwise, we will be moving back toward narrow-minded nationalism.”
There is now a willingness on the part of the European Union to be more bold and expressive of their discontent with President Trump.
We should not be surprised. We have been the hand that fed Europe for the past eight years. Now we demand they pay their fair share of 2% of each country’s GDP to support NATO. We were paying over 75% of the cost of NATO. Why? It is those countries that are being protected. Finally, thanks to President Trump, European countries are beginning to step up.
We see how different things are in Eastern Europe where the Soviet Union dominated those countries under a communist dictatorship. We saw the Hungarian student speak in favor of the Polish efforts to remove Poland from Soviet domination on October 23, 1956. Then we saw the Soviet tanks enter Hungary as they revolted against the Soviet Union. The same thing happened on August 20, 1968 when Soviet Troops under the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia.
Now, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia and other Eastern European countries appreciate what President Trump is doing because they understand that the collectivism they faced under Soviet domination can only be stopped by sovereign nations defending their right of self-interest. The European Union has taken many economic freedoms away from individual member nations and that smacks of the kind of domination rejected by Eastern Europe decades ago.
So yes, President Macron, our President is following the path on which he was elected: American national interests come first. My message to you and Chancellor Merkel and other socialist Western European leaders is: Deal with It.
Do not depend on the United States to be your Sugar Daddy. The President has made it clear that we will deal fairly and on equal footing with any nation in a one-on-one basis. We will no longer feed into European collectivism.
And never forget, President Trump was elected precisely for these reasons.
#MikeSiegel
