Dumb Diplomacy Alienates Canada and Mexico, Costs Consumers
from Power Line by John Hinderaker
(John Hinderaker) On Monday, President Obama conducted a one-day summit meeting in Washington with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. American press reports on the summit were yawners, but Canadian and Mexican newspapers told the real story. Investors Business Daily reports:
- Obama’s neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who’s out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren’t being reported. …
- Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.
- The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.
- Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.
- Canada has also all but gone public about something trade watchers have known for a long time: that the U.S. has blocked Canada’s entry to the eight-way free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an alliance of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, Chile, and Singapore. Both Canada and Mexico want to join and would benefit immensely.
- U.S. media dutifully reported Obama’s false claim that Canada, our top trading partner, is too protectionist — for whom, we don’t know. Malaysia maybe? — even as it’s good enough for NAFTA, the trillion-dollar trade treaty that is the world’s largest. …
- Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting.
- Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.
- The mainstream U.S. press has kept those questions out of the official press conferences, while Obama has feigned ignorance to the Mexicans and hasn’t even apologized.
- In short, the summit was a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. and its relations with its neighbors north and south.
Once again, the Obama administration shoots itself in the foot–or, rather, shoots us in the foot–through dumb diplomacy. Via InstaPundit. |
