Stunned US allies seek new friends as Trump tensions mount

BRUSSELS: America’s traditional allies are desperately seeking new friends as Donald Trump hails the leaders of North Korea and China instead, but may have to rely on themselves to ride out the storm, analysts said.

In the latest blow from the country that is supposed to be their closest friend, the EU, Canada and Mexico found themselves hit Friday by punishing US tariffs on steel aluminium imports.Recent months have also seen Trump pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, open a US embassy in Jerusalem, leave the Paris climate pact and lambast NATO allies for not paying their way.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday that “each time I think of Trump, I am lost,” while EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said Friday that the tariffs would further harm transatlantic ties.

“The Europeans and Canadians are on their own when it comes to the US, at least until the next election,” Judy Dempsey, editor in chief of Strategic Europe, the blog of the Carnegie Europe think-tank, told AFP.

“The Europeans are competitors for Trump in trade, on values and human rights. With the authoritarian regimes he does not face that and he seems much more comfortable with the Russians, with North Korea, with the Chinese,” Dempsey added.

Trump’s onslaught on Washington’s allies has been all the more disorientating as he turns on the charm with a string of authoritarian states long seen as US rivals.When not coaxing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into a landmark nuclear disarmament summit, Trump has admiringly called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “world class poker player” amid their own trade dispute.

Trump has also defended his efforts to have a “good relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the assessment of US intelligence agencies that Moscow meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.