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As Trump Returns to G7, Rift With Allies Is Even Deeper

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As Trump Returns to G7, Rift With Allies Is Even Deeper

When President Trump last attended a Group of 7 meeting in Canada, he was in many ways the odd man out.

At that meeting, in 2018, Mr. Trump called for the alliance of Western countries to embrace Russia, antagonized allies and ultimately stormed out of the summit over a trade battle he began by imposing metals tariffs on Canada.

As he returns on Sunday for the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, those fissures have only deepened. Since retaking office, the president has sought to shrink America’s military role abroad and made threats to annex the summit’s host after embarking on a much more expansive trade war.

Mr. Trump is now facing a self-imposed deadline of early July to reach trade deals. His trade adviser even promised in April that the tariffs would lead to “90 deals in 90 days.” Despite reaching framework agreements with Britain and China, the administration has shown scant progress on deals with other major trading partners.

The future of the president’s favored negotiating tool is uncertain as a legal battle over his tariffs plays out in the courts. But a failure to reach accords could lead the Trump administration to once again ratchet up tariffs and send markets roiling.

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“I think we’ll have a few new trade deals,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday as he left for the summit.

The gathering also comes amid fears of a broader, regional war in the Middle East after Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran’s leadership and nuclear facilities last week, prompting both nations to trade strikes.

“Sometimes they have to fight it out, but we’re going to see what happens,” Mr. Trump said when asked what he was doing to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran. “I think there’s a good chance there will be a deal.”

Mr. Trump’s aides say he will discuss a range of topics, including fairness in global trade, critical minerals, illegal migration, drug smuggling and international security. World leaders will also be focused on surging oil prices and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Leaders of the Group of 7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — will convene in Kananaskis, a remote town west of Calgary. The summit this week, the 50th such meeting, is usually a forum for the U.S. president to leverage allies and partners to further its agenda and assert its leadership on global issues of consequence.

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But world leaders appear to be bracing for Mr. Trump’s shift away from global partnerships. Canadian officials have said that they were scrapping hopes of issuing a joint communiqué, the traditional statement leaders put out at the end of such meetings. Mr. Trump refused to endorse the joint statement moments after it was released at the end of the 2018 summit.

“One thing that the G7 represents just beyond the world’s largest economies is a community of shared values — shared values that Trump doesn’t necessarily share or subscribe to,” said Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

Beyond trade, the war in Ukraine is likely to be a point of contention at the summit. While Mr. Trump has signaled reluctance to stay engaged in the war and derided multilateral organizations like NATO, European allies have rallied around Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is expected to be in attendance.

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s finance minister, said the presence of Ukraine was meant to “send a strong message to the world,” that the Group of 7 was recommitting to support Kyiv and hold Moscow accountable.

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At the 2018 summit in Canada, one of the biggest disputes between Mr. Trump and allies was when he demanded Russia’s readmission to the Group of 7 nations. The country was ousted from the diplomatic forum after Mr. Putin violated international norms by seizing parts of Ukraine in 2014.

Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has boasted about his close relationship with Mr. Putin, and has repeatedly taken his side in the war — even falsely accusing Ukraine of starting it. Thus far, his embrace of Mr. Putin has not helped broker peace in the war.

“Given Trump’s ongoing conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the prospect of any meaningful new G7 action to promote a durable resolution of the three-year-old conflict is highly uncertain,” Matthew P. Goodman, the director of the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote last week.

He said Mr. Trump’s attendance at the summit and his decision to impose tariffs on the other members had “cast a deep shadow over the gathering in Canada.”

Mr. Trump’s increased hostility toward U.S. allies is perhaps most exemplified by the relationship with the host country.

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The relationship between the neighbors and top trading partners has been at a historical low since Mr. Trump’s re-election because of his decision to impose tariffs on Canadian goods and his continuing to threaten its sovereignty by asserting that Canada should be a part of the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada has sought a cordial relationship with Mr. Trump, but during a meeting in the Oval Office last month delivered a stern response to Mr. Trump’s suggestions: Canada “won’t be for sale, ever.”

“Never say never,” Mr. Trump replied.

Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Mr. Trump’s treatment of Canada was “emblematic of the bullying Trump considers appropriate.”

“If this is the behavior toward a country with which we share a 5,500-mile border and a common air defense, it’s sure to be similarly antagonistic to other allies,” Dr. Schake said.

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A May poll showed that Canadian sentiment toward the United States was at a historical low. Nine out of 10 Canadians rejected Mr. Trump’s idea of making their country the “51st state.” And recent travel data showed that Canadians were canceling or changing plans to visit the United States.

Canadians have been so galvanized against Mr. Trump that the rift appeared to have swung national elections. After Canada seemed poised to elect a conservative as prime minister in its April elections, the pendulum swung in favor of Mr. Carney, a liberal, by 30 percentage points, because the conservative candidate was seen as too close to Mr. Trump.

Still, while protests are expected during the summit, Alberta is a conservative stronghold within Canada, so Mr. Trump will find some friendly welcome there. Sometimes referred to as “Canada’s Texas” on account of its oil riches and conservative politics, Alberta is in the middle of a push to hold a secession referendum.

Mr. Carney, who this year holds the Group of 7 presidency, has invited the leaders of several nonmember countries: India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, Australia and South Korea, and the head of NATO.

In his second term, Mr. Trump has had explosive clashes in the Oval Office with Mr. Zelensky and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa.

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Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that while the United States had historically played a role as a consensus builder at Group of 7 summits, it had often come to the table with a different perspective than its allies.

Mr. Froman argued that Mr. Trump was engaging the world, just under different terms than his predecessors.

“On some of these issues, we are currently alone,” Mr. Froman said.

“But I think one of the goals will be to bring other countries in our direction,” he added, “whether that’s through careful diplomacy” or “the threat of tariffs and sanctions.”

Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.

The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.

The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.

Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.

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Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.

Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.

In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.

Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.

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The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

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Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

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The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.

Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”

“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”

Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.

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Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.

“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.

“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”

Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.

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Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.

The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.

But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.

Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.

“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”

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What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.

Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”

Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.

Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.

While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.

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In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.

“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

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