Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Boo Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
President Trump was in Alberta, Canada this week in the
resort town of Kananaskis for a meeting of the Group
of Seven. He was scheduled to meet with other world
leaders over two days, but on Monday afternoon, the White
House announced Trump's plans to leave early right after dinner.
I'm in Alberta reporting on the G seven with a
team of Bloomberg colleagues from all over the world, including
(00:31):
Nick Wadhams, who oversees our coverage of diplomacy and national security,
and Nick told me to him at least Trump's decision
to head home early was not a total surprise.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
There had been these hints throughout the day if you
had been looking for them.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Something Nick and I have been following is how the
conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran has
upended the agenda at this summit.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The President, at brief Q and A with Caer Starmer
had said, you know, he had a lot to get
back to this I think go on basically is at
the negotiating table, they want to make a deal, and
as soon as I leave you we're going to be
doing something, but I have to leave you. I have,
you know, this commitment. I have a lot of commitments.
We kept foreshadowing that something big was going to happen
(01:16):
on Iran, and of course he had also sent this
tweet essentially saying, you know, everybody needs to evacuate Tehran.
So that then created a lot of anxiety that, okay,
the US is essentially on the cusp of being pulled
into the Iran conflicts.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Before Trump boarded Air Force one to head back to Washington,
he joined the other G seven leaders for an official
photograph and he responded to a few questions from reporters.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
It's really nice. I wish I could stay for tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
But did they understand this big stuff?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Questions for anybody else?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And then after dinner, Trump was gone, to the frustration
of some of the other participants, many of whom hoped
to hammer out trade deals with the US President. Vladimir
Zelenski came here to make the case for more aid.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
You had had a lot of leaders who essentially flew
to Alberta basically just to see Donald Trump. I'm thinking
chiefly of the Mexican president Claudie Schanbaum, who actually flew
commercially from Mexico City to meet President Trump, and she
had not met him yet in his term, and she
didn't get that meeting.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Historically, G seven summits have been forums for deal making
and diplomacy, and the US has played a big role.
President Trump could have used this one. Nick told me
to rally US allies to express support for Israel and
to put more pressure on Iran.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
The G seven would be a tool the President would use. Now,
this president clearly sees the G seven almost as a
hindrance to his policies, where he sees it essentially is
standing in the way of his desire to get what
he wants out of the Midias conflict.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
On Tuesday, back in Washington, President Trump posted on social
media a call for Iran's quote unconditional surrender, and in
another post, he praised the United States' military capabilities, raising
more questions about what comes next. I'm David Gera here
on the sidelines of the G seven Leader summit in Alberta, Canada,
(03:17):
and this is the big take from Bloomberg News Today
on the show. Why did President Trump decide to leave
here early? What did it have to do, if anything,
with the US role in the conflict between Israel and Iran,
and what does it leave hanging in the balance? Nick
Shortly after the President left, he told reporters that he
(03:39):
was leaving to negotiate a real end to this conflict
in the Middle East, that he wasn't about trying to
find a short term ceasefire or a temporary ceasefire. On
the other hand, their speculation maybe he left because he
wanted to get the US more engaged militarily in this conflict,
and we saw some administration officials pushing back on that.
What's the latest best thinking about what the White House
(04:00):
approach to this conflict is going to be now that
the President is back in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well, I think what you're seeing here is a White
House that is still very much grappling with this decision.
So the President, it seems, essentially has two options. One
is the US gets involved and contributes the bunker busting
bombs that it has in its arsenal. The President, I
think is deciding between that on the one hand, and
also he has a notion that it is possible to
(04:26):
achieve a sort of grand diplomatic solution. I think he
does believe that if Israel and potentially the US push
hard enough, squeeze Iran hard enough, both militarily and through
sanctions and through other economic pressure, that Iran will essentially
capitulate and agree to a broader deal that potentially giving
(04:47):
up its nuclear program entirely. Of course, there's a lot
of debate about that. I mean, diplomacy at the point
of a gun has its skeptics, because what, Okay, you
get Iran to agree to something, Well, then what happens next.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, let's look at each of those tracks one by one,
and I'll start with the diplomatic one. Israel's initial attack
on Iran took place just a couple of days before
there were supposed to be talks in Aman, the sixth
round of talks on denuclearization on Iran's nuclear program. Given
all that's happened, is Iran eager or willing, I should say,
(05:21):
to come to the table once again.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Well, it's a great question, because Iranian officials have essentially
left the door open to talks, which is pretty extraordinary.
I mean, they are currently in a open, hot conflict
with Israel, and they are saying, listen, we have never
closed the door to negotiations. We are willing to continue
to talk.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
The big question, though, is a thing that the two
sides have never been able to resolve, which is, on
the one hand, you have the US saying Iran, you
should not be allowed to enrich uranium. Any deal that
we agree to would essentially take enrichment off off the table.
You cannot produce the material that would go into a
nuclear power plan or a nuclear bomb. Iran says, no,
(06:07):
that is the one thing we really want more than
anything else. We want to have the right to enrich.
The two sides have never figured out how to breach
that fundamental sticking point, and there is still no evidence
that they're anywhere closer.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
So that's the diplomatic path, pivoting to the potential military one.
What are the long term considerations that the president is
considering here. It sounds like there's a lot of internal
politics at play here between sort of the Trump part
of the Republican Party and the kind of hawkish toward
Iran part of the Republican Party as well.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Right having covered wars in the Middle East for a
long time, you tend to see certain patterns that develop,
and right now, the conversation that's happening in Washington at least,
is this notion that the President's going to send a
B two bomber over to Iran. It's going to drop
a couple of these thirty thousand pound bombs and then
problem solved. So there's a real fixation on this idea
(07:01):
that by getting involved, the US can essentially destroy Iran's
nuclear program once and for all with a single military strike.
A lot of the President's critics, both within the Republican
Party and among Democrats, are saying, wait a minute, have
we not learned the lessons of twenty years of war
in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere. The solution is never
(07:22):
so simple. What if we discover that Iran has hidden
nuclear sites where it's conducting some of this enrichment activity
and secret What if a strike doesn't work, What if
Iran then attacks US bases elsewhere in Iraq or in
the UAE or in cutter and then the US has
to respond militarily, as President Trump is threatened to do
(07:42):
if US forces are attacked. So you have this notion
that there is a very simple solution here, But then
there are a lot of critics who say, listen, you
start down this road. It is just going to pull
the US even deeper into exactly the type of war
that President Trump has said he wants to avoid.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
As Day two of the G seven unfolds, it's clear
the President may have had other reasons for returning to
the White House early. We'll get into those after the break. Nick,
The official line from the White House Communications Office and
(08:21):
from the President himself is he left this summit to
go back and deal with the issues in the Middle East.
You and I both know that there's a level of
discomfort that comes with him being on the road and
making trips like this, and on top of that, there's
this kind of historical displeasure that he has with sitting
in a room of other world leaders and going through
these various working groups and plenary sessions and all of that.
At this point, are we confident that the rational that
(08:44):
the White House is siting here is in fact why
President Trump left the summit early, that it does have
to do with the Middle East and nothing more, or
is there something else at play here?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I am not at all confident that it really has
to do with the Middle East. I mean, yes, there
is a lot going on in the Middle East, and
you could make a very persuasive argument that the president
wanted to be back in Washington with all of the
assets and resources and advisors available to him that he
doesn't have out in a mountain resort in Canada. However,
(09:15):
there are a few caveats to that. One is today
was going to be all about Ukraine. And when we
had been looking at this schedule ahead of this summit,
there was a big question about whether Trump was going
to come in the first place. And then we were
looking at this schedule and it's like, Wow, he's going
to be here for two days. The first day is
all about the economy and trade and things like that.
The second day he's going to be sitting in a
(09:37):
room with President Vladimir Zelenski and other world leaders who
are essentially going to try to browbeat him to get
on board with more sanctions for Russia, lowering the price
cap on the exports of Russian oil, potential new support
for Voladimir Zelenski. And the question we all had was
is he really going to be willing to endure this.
(09:57):
It's eight hours out here talking of about Ukraine. That's
just not something he wants to do or subject himself to.
The Other issue, is we started to see these signs
yesterday where he just looked a little bit uncomfortable. He
did not seem to be particularly sort of at ease
or relaxed. So it was shocking that he decided to
(10:20):
pull out of this meeting, But I wouldn't say it
was necessarily surprising, Nick.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
I think of President Zelenski, who, like so many of
these world leaders, both in the G seven, is invited
guests of the G seven, really traveled far to be
here in this remote corner of Canada. How disappointing is
it for him not to have President Trump here.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
I'm sure someone like Voladimir Zelensky is disappointed not to
have that one on one meeting with President Donald Trump,
as are the others, because US support is so crucial
for the Ukraine conflict. On the other hand, I sort
of have to imagine that maybe there's a little bit
of relief. I mean, now you have a situation up
in Kananascus where it really is a meeting of like
(11:04):
minded actors. Everybody who is now there agrees on what
they think the path forward should be. You're not going
to have any more of this situation where everybody was
trying to humor President Trump or mollify him, or was
worried about a blow up. I mean they can kind
of get down to business on their own up there,
(11:25):
and there is this push happening in the background where
European leaders, I mean they have said openly, Canada has
said openly the old days are over. We have to
move on and look forward, and that means bolstering the
European security architecture with Canada, greater defense cooperation between those countries,
essentially not cutting the US out, but understanding that there's
(11:48):
a future where the US is a less reliable ally.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
As I look at the pantheon of world leaders who
are here, there is Narendromodi, the Prime Minister of India,
There's Claudia Shinbaum of Mexico. They are all matter of worldly.
Er is here who expected that they would have the
opportunity to sit down on the sidelines with President Trump
and his economic advisors, many of whom came here with him,
the Treasury Secretary of the US Trade Representative, to talk
about the prospects for their being trade deals or frameworks
(12:13):
for deals. What happens to all of that now, and
as we look ahead to this July ninth, deadline by
which that pause that the President put in place is
scheduled to be lifted. How big of a detriment is
it not having this opportunity in this resort town in
western Canada to try to get down to brass tacks
with the President to find a solution.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I think it's difficult to overstate how severely disappointed they
are going to be to not have that conversation, because
everything we have seen in the last couple months when
you talk about the tariff discussions and new trade deals,
are that you cannot do this with anybody but the President,
and it doesn't matter how many hours you spend in
(12:50):
negotiation with his trade representative or his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik,
because he can just blow all that up with a tweet.
So there really is this sense of seeking a personal
dynamic directly with the President as a way to hash
out these things. I mean, I think from the outside,
a lot of folks had this notion that, Okay, you
have these trade negotiators in conversation for hours and hours
(13:14):
and they're ruling talks, debating every comma and paragraph point
things like that. But no, I mean, these really have
to be settled in one on one conversations with the president.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You talked about. Now, with President Trump being gone from
this summit, a lot of like minded actors able to
get down to business in a way they might not
have been able to if President Trump had been here.
But President Trump leads the world's largest economy. He's an
incredibly important figure. And I wonder if you think you
can have a successful G seven summit without the participation
of the United States, is it even possible? And what
(13:43):
does it say just about the strength or integrity of
this group going forward?
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Well, I think having covered a lot of these summits
in the past when things were working well, you did
have call it almost a slightly Trumpian view of like,
what is the point of what we're doing here? All
these leaders come together, they issue a thirty page communicate
that talks about the need to fight climate change and
(14:10):
the need to work together to counter China, and you know,
whatever it might be, and you think, well, what did
that all amount to? Trump has in some ways sort
of exposed that a lot of this is theater, a
lot of it doesn't really amount to much, And it
does pose a big question going forward, because no, the
G seven simply cannot exist without the presence of the
(14:31):
world's biggest economy, of the US. If the US is
not willing to play ball. You know, the one hope
I think folks have for this is leaders come and go. Okay,
So President Trump may not be participating this time, but
there are still a lot of folks in the Republican
Party who believe that these kind of institutions do have merit.
It's not going to be that long in the general
scheme of thing until President Trump departs the scene. G
(14:54):
seven has been around for fifty years. We're in a
bad patch now, and maybe things will come back around
later on once he leaves.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurra.
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