View from abroad: The Dangers of Alienating Europe
President Trump seems determined to confront America’s European allies “on every issue of importance, from trade to climate change to the multilateral deal with Iran,” observes Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky. Indeed, it sometimes seems like he doesn’t really want allies at all. That could be troubling, he suggests: America’s favorability is at just 46 percent in France and 35 percent in Germany, the lowest since 2008. If Trump’s foreign-policy approach is seen as motivated by domestic political concerns, that would make US-bashing “popular and politically lucrative” in Europe. Which means the next election cycle there “may turn out to be far more anti-American than the last one.” And that, he warns, “is how longstanding alliances are undermined.”
From the right: A Pretty Prom Dress and US Cultural Rot
National Review’s David French relates “the dumbest story you’ve ever heard”: A white Utah teen named Keziah Daum posted photos of her Asian-influenced prom dress to social media and was denounced for “cultural appropriation” by toxic social-justice warriors whose accusations went viral. Daum, to her credit, “weathered the shamestorm without backing down,” saying she’d admired the dress’s beauty and the culture that inspired it. Hers has become the American story. But this still underscores how those who claim to care the most about identity and oppression “are seized by rage and unreason” — and “don’t you dare try to point out the nonsense.” Yet “reason can’t cede the public square to rage.” Indeed, Daum’s experience is the new American story, “a symbol of the incoherent anger that is tearing this nation apart.”
Foreign desk: Use Iran Nuke Secrets To Squeeze Tehran
It’d be “a waste of this extraordinary intelligence” to use the treasure trove of Iranian secrets stolen by Israel simply as a pretext for withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, suggests The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. Far better, he says, “to use it as a pressure tool” on the Iranian regime. That could bring Europe, Russia and China along in “a common push” to “isolate Iran and tighten the deal,” rather than hand Tehran “the propaganda victory that US withdrawal would provide.” Fact is, the Iranians have been caught “red-handed” — better to “let them squirm awhile as the international community sifts the evidence.” Besides, says Ignatius, “there’s far more” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t disclose. Thanks to Israel, President Trump “just got lucky on Iran.”
Conservative: Prez Confounds Critics Who Said He’d Quit
Give President Trump credit for at least one thing, suggests Ira Stoll at the New York Sun: “outlasting his critics’ predictions of the length of his tenure.” Just days after the 2016 election, he notes, The New York Times’ David Brooks confidently predicted Trump would “resign or be impeached within a year.” And he was hardly alone — though the goalposts keep getting moved. Blame it on “the short-term commercial incentives of journalism-as-entertainment and the longer-term commercial incentives of journalism-as-credible-information”: A “Trump Will Resign” headline “gets a lot of clicks” and “feeds the fantasies of people who deeply dislike” Trump. But each false “resignation” headline “further erodes the credibility of a press that . . . functions both as Mr. Trump’s opposition and his foil.”
Activist: Tax-Hikers Are Coming For Your Meat
Global-warming activists have long tried and failed to impose a federal carbon tax, notes Americans for Tax Reforms’ Tyler Tate at the Washington Examiner. So they’re now pushing “a double-digit excise tax on American meat,” posing “a direct threat to grocery affordability, consumer choice and jobs.” The basis for this tax: “Livestock emit methane,” so Washington “should impose exorbitant ‘sin’ taxes to make meat too expensive.” It has growing support abroad: Germany’s federal environmental agency recently proposed a 19 percent meat tax. Now this effort is “spilling into the US,” led by animal-rights, environmental and public-health advocates (the latter having already enacted taxes on sugary drinks). But, like most taxes, its impact would fall disproportionately on middle- and low-income Americans.
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann