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Trump Foreign Policy Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 26, 2017 79 Comments
Earlier today, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled a visit to America after President Donald Trump told him to do so if Mexico refuses to pay for the border wall. Despite the cancellation, Trump and his administration has not backed down on making Mexico pay for the wall. Today, Press Secretary Sean Spicer released details how Trump plans to make it happen:
In remarks to reporters, press secretary Sean Spicer said a plan was “taking shape now” to institute a 20% tax on imports from countries with which the U.S. runs a trade deficit, “like Mexico.” Mr. Spicer later told reporters that this was one of several ideas being considered by the White House to “demonstrate that paying for the wall can be done.” Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said the administration was considering “a buffet of options.”

Posted by Leslie Eastman on January 26, 2017 25 Comments
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that during its last few hours, the Obama administration sent $221 million to the Palestinian Authority that GOP members of Congress had been blocking. Team Trump has now frozen those monies.
The Trump administration has informed the Palestinian Authority that it is freezing the transfer of $221 million which was quietly authorized by the Obama administration in its final hours on January 20, a senior Palestinian source has told The Times of Israel.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 25, 2017 7 Comments
President Donald Trump will address a few executive orders from the Department of Homeland Security, including a wall on the border with Mexico, immigration, CIA black sites, and declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. It's his first visit with DHS Secretary John Kelly. We have a live feed after the jump. I will provide tweets and updates as it goes.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 25, 2017 20 Comments
President Donald Trump will sign a bunch of executive orders today over national security issues, including a wall along the border of America and Mexico and policy against sanctuary cities. Trump will visit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) where he will sign all the orders. Trump made immigration the cornerstone of his campaign, often talking about a wall along the border and stopping Syrian refugees from entering the country. According to the Associated Press, one person in the administration said the proposals "included a ban on entry to the U.S. for at least 30 days from countries including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, though the person cautioned the details could still change."

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 23, 2017 21 Comments
President Donald Trump began his first full day with a bang by signing three executive orders that withdraws America from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), defunds International Planned Parenthood, and freeze hiring of federal workers. TPP became a hot topic on the campaign trail with Trump vocally against it. Former President Barack Obama worked on the agreement for almost two years with the aim of "eliminating most tariffs and other trade barriers among the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Vietnam and half a dozen other countries around the Pacific."

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 23, 2017 8 Comments
At the White House, President Donald Trump announced meetings with Canadian Ptime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He said:
"We're going to start some negotiations having to do with NAFTA," Trump said. "Anybody ever hear of NAFTA?" he said. "I ran a campaign somewhat based on NAFTA. But we're going to start renegotiating on NAFTA, on immigration, on security at the border."

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 15, 2017 7 Comments
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, President-elect Donald Trump said he may lift the Russian sanctions and has no commitment to the One China policy:
“If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?” he said.
Trump also said the One China policy remains up in the air "until he saw what he considered progress from Beijing in its currency and trade practices." Yeah, needless to say, those comments did not please Beijing.

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 08, 2017 6 Comments
Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan, will make transit stops in the United States when she heads to the Americas, but will not receive a visit from President-elect Donald Trump or from anyone on his transition team:
Trump transition spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said in an email Saturday that the president-elect would not be meeting with the Taiwanese leader while she is in the U.S., nor will members of his transition team.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 22, 2016 20 Comments
Back in February 2012, I wrote that I expected that in his second term Obama would force his vision of a "peace" deal on the Israelis. We've had several close calls, with the John Kerry negotiation fiasco and flirtation with various European and Arab initiatives through the UN. The mechanism would be a failure to veto a Security Council resolution setting the terms of a deal. Part of it is Obama hatred of Bibi Netanyahu, dating back to the beginning of Obama's presidency. The snubs and dislike was palpable long before Netanyahu's address to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2016 7 Comments
Weakness is not rewarded in the Middle East, as the Obama-Kerry fiasco in Syria is showing. It also is not rewarded in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Khaled Abu Toameh writing at The Gatestone Institute website, makes the point that Palestinian militants view Israeli concessions as weakness, and actually encourage more intransigence, The Palestinian Jihads against Israel:
Many Palestinians see Israeli concessions, gestures and unilateral moves as proof of capitulation, rather than positive signs testifying to Israel's peaceful intentions. These "concessions for peace" by Israel further increases Palestinians' appetite for launching armed attacks against Israel. Today, many Palestinians are convinced that they can achieve more through stabbings, vehicular rammings and shooting attacks than sitting with Israel at the negotiating table.
That phenomenon has also been evident in the repeatedly failed decades-long peace negotiations.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 11, 2016 8 Comments
President-elect Trump sat down with Chris Wallace this morning and discussed a range of topics from the latest on Russia's purported hacking or influence in the election to his decisions on making government more efficient to his choices for his cabinet to trade. Fox News reports:
Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News he wants to make government more efficient, especially when it comes to the EPA.“EPA, you can't get things approved. I mean, people are waiting in line for 15 years before they get rejected, okay? That's why people don't want to invest in this country,” he said. “... So we're going to clean it up. We're going to speed it up and, by the way, if somebody is not doing the right thing we're not going to approve.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 03, 2016 25 Comments
Has WWIII started? I thought I'd wake up to a desolate United States after the way the media treated President-elect Donald Trump's call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, which is the "first time a president or president-elect has spoken with the leader of Taiwan since Washington established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979." Of course China threw a hissy fit and lodged a protest with Washington:
“It must be pointed out that there is only one China in the world,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday, adding that it had lodged “solemn representations with the US”.
But as far as I know the world has not ended or China has not severed ties. The dependence on America (yes, China needs America) has shown that China will not retaliate against America except with a few strong words.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 22, 2016 8 Comments
When Wikileaks released Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in July, people immediately pointed fingers at Russia and cried that the Kremlin wanted to influence the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, who won by a large margin over Hillary Clinton. But National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers dashed those conspiracy theories this past weekend:
“I don't think in the end it had the effect that [the hackers] had hoped it might,” Rogers said during a panel at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 20, 2016 9 Comments
The media's obsession with a national Muslim registry continues. Former RNC Chair and incoming White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus joined Meet the Press Sunday morning. Host, Chuck Todd asked Priebus whether the next administration is toying with a national Muslim registry. NBC News then ran with this headline:
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