“… His comments, delivered in public remarks and social-media posts on Sunday, come after he
recently trolled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state and referring to Trudeau as a governor. During the recent presidential campaign, Trump said he would deploy the U.S. military to impose a
naval embargo on Mexican cartels and order the Pentagon to use American special forces to
take down cartel leaders.
… Taken together, the president-elect’s broadsides signal that he will pursue a confrontational
foreign-policy agenda, leveraging unconventional threats and pointed demands in an attempt to gain advantage over
allies and adversaries alike.
Trump is often prone to provocation, and it wasn’t immediately clear if he would try to follow through on his demands. But if he does, he is likely to face stiff resistance from world leaders, who would object to any effort to undermine their sovereignty.
… Trump’s comments about the Panama Canal drew an angry rebuke from Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who took office in July after campaigning on a platform to curb U.S.-bound migration through the country’s pristine tropical rainforests with support from the U.S. government. He rejected Trump’s threats as an affront to Panama’s sovereignty.
“Every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent area belongs to Panama and will continue to be so,” Mulino responded in a video address Sunday afternoon. “The sovereignty and independence of our country aren’t negotiable.”
“We’ll see about that!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform later in the day. He added in another social-media post featuring an image of a waterway and an American flag, “Welcome to the United States Canal!”
Short of an invasion, as the U.S. carried out in 1989 to overthrow then-dictator Manuel Noriega, the U.S. government has no ability to restore control of the canal, which the U.S. built more than a century ago. …”
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Trump is weirdly setting his political capital on fire before he even gets inaugurated. The potential downfall of Justin Trudeau, where his groveling before Trump after the election and Trump threatening a tariff war with Canada was seen as a last straw for the weakened PM by a lot of his own party, is a pretty clear sign to other world leaders that standing up to Trump will be a better political strategy, at least in the short term.
I dunno, setting aside my extensive policy differences with Trump, I genuinely don’t see the political upside in a lot of what he has been posting and saying about Greenland, Panama, Canada and other foreign relations. It is sort of like the failed 11th hour assault on the CR, where he belatedly demanded something he didn’t have the votes for and had to take an unforced “L” when he didn’t even have to be involved at all, all the while blatantly stating he wanted to pin raising the debt ceiling on Biden so people wouldn’t blame Trump.
Or like nominating Matt Gaetz for anything, much less AG.
Baffling political moves, TBH. Like if I thought he takes any advice from anyone, I would swear someone advising him is a mole trying to undermine his presidency as early as possible.
