President Trump was elected on a pledge to put “America first.” But that doesn’t mean alliances should be secondary. Strong bonds are in the country’s best interests, and straining these ties is counterproductive in an increasingly turbulent world.

But that’s what Trump did with his profoundly bad decision to take America out of the Paris climate accord, a move as diplomatically dire as it is environmentally unsound.

Allies had urged the president to remain in the pact. His rejection of it, and them, will weaken the Western alliance, and thus the US.

A preview of this erosion could be seen in the public distancing from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most consequential leader. Trump’s rhetoric at the NATO and G-7 summits prompted Merkel to pronounce that “the times in which we could rely on others are to some extent over, as I have experienced in the last two days,” referring to the G-7 summit in which Trump would not commit to the Paris accord. Merkel added, “We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands.”

Trump should be seeking to tighten ties by clearly showing global leadership on issues of worldwide impact. In fact, the administration should seek to ink, not shrink from, transnational agreements designed to bring more order to an unruly world.

Instead it’s doing the opposite -- not only with the climate agreement, but by jettisoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a blunder that won’t make America great again, but could do wonders for China, which has rushed to fill the void with its own trade partnership that won’t have anywhere near the environmental, labor and intellectual-property protections TPP boasted. While Trump’s campaign rhetoric makes it highly unlikely that he would embrace the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a US-European Union free trade agreement, unnecessary fallout over Germany’s trade surplus would be ill advised, especially since so many German manufacturers have US plants.

Most won’t argue with the general principle of prioritizing this nation’s needs. But Trump, and the country, won’t succeed by economically, diplomatically and militarily alienating allies while isolating the US.


(Star Tribune)