The Obama administration has managed to get us into a trade war with Brazil, the Financial Times reports. Brazil is raising tariffs on American goods in retaliation against American farm subsidies for cotton. For a president who ran on restoring America's good relations with the rest of the world, Mr. Obama sure does seem to be encountering some obstacles. First America's relations with China frayed over the Google hacking, the American weapons deal with Taiwan, and Mr. Obama's meeting with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Then Turkey, a NATO ally, recalled its ambassador to America after Secretary of State Clinton couldn't stop Congress from passing a resolution on Armenian genocide, and after an American diplomat reportedly interrupted a meeting between Ms. Clinton and the Turkish prime minister so that Ms. Clinton could meet with the Sheik of Qatar, stating, "This meeting has to end. The meeting with the Qatar Sheikh is more important." And don't forget the snub of Europe. Whatever one's view of the underlying merits of all these cases, they do pose a certain challenge to the widely repeated narrative that America's problems with the world were all the result of President Bush's clumsy neo-conservative cowboy unilateralist foreign policy.
Now Brazil
https://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/03/now-brazil
by Editor | Related Topics: China, President Obama, Reverse Robin-Hood, Taxes receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list