This moron will use trade war as a tool to threaten absolutely any country making political decisions, whatever the nature, he disagrees with. It's that simple. To suggest it might only be used in relation to Israel and Palestine, say, would be naive. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2...
So far, 'allies' of the USA have trodden lightly with Trump. Now, however, I think they feel sufficiently unified with one another that they're willing to break ranks en masse over Israel. I wondered if Macron's decision would lead to a cascade effect, and it appears to be doing so. It would be...
... the first issue over which Trump faces a unified front and finds himself isolated. It will be interesting to see how he responds. Taking on nations individually, as China well knows, works when your economy is big enough. But no economy is sufficiently powerful to take on everyone all at once.
It's inevitable that sooner or later, he's not going to get his way by bullying lots of individual nations into unwelcome trade deals. Any unified or semiunified response will backfire, if that union comprised Europe + X,Y and Z, for example.