THICK END OF THE WEDGE
PETER BRUCE: Donald Trump’s ill wind blows no good to SA
We may not know it yet, and he probably doesn’t know it either, but Donald Trump is coming for us. From the moment he flounced out of a Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Canada and called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "weak" and "dishonest" before meeting and embracing murderous North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a "tough guy" he can do business with, the US president’s billowing trade war with Europe has sent waves through SA. It isn’t just the effect of Trump’s dismantling of the post-Second World War liberal order on the markets and the rand, though that is serious enough. Most foreign direct investment in SA comes from the US’s wartime and post-war allies, the countries Trump has decided to pick a fight with. The worst of it may be that he is not entirely wrong. His gripe is that the US pays more into the institutions that protect the security of Germany, the UK and France, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, than they do.And he’s right. Why, he asks, should th...
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