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The View | Donald Trump’s foreign policy gaffes make the headlines but hardly stir the markets
Richard Harris says the market response to the underachieving Trump-Kim summit and the tensions in the run-up just shows that investors see politics as important only when it affects economics
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Why you can trust SCMP
Donald Trump’s Fox-News-led foreign policymaking is erratic in the extreme but there is nevertheless plenty of optimism about the possibility of finding a diamond in the rough.
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This is despite the fact that over the past month or so, he has picked fights over the Iran nuclear deal, blown cold then hot on China trade, and managed to upset his G7 allies on trade policy – flavoured by insulting and not-so-accurate tweet storms.
In comparison, he has been surprisingly diplomatic regarding North Korea, unlike his petulant advisers John Bolton and Rudy Guiliani, who came close to derailing the Kim-Trump summit through ignorant outbursts. The distinction caused many commentators to read far too much into the negotiations.
Some said that Kim Jong-un bested Trump, who agreed to cancel military exercises in South Korea. Nonsense. This is a free giveaway. The United States knows every inch of Korea, having conducted regular exercises on the peninsula for the past 68 years.
Yet others said that Trump has gained more than any other US president. Poppycock. The US would have met North Korea in recent decades had the overtures been right – it takes two to tango. The nuclear facilities that Kim has agreed to decommission are widely believed to be either already destroyed or unserviceable.
Watch: North Korea begins dismantling its nuclear test site in May 2018
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