Who fares best against Trump?

The Donald is, by his own estimation, a legendary deal-maker and negotiator.  Well, he does get (some) things done, and indeed sometimes gets his own way.  But how much of this is deal-making?  And how good are his deals?  His reputation in the New York real estate sector sucks is, errr, equivocal.

He's been in action quite a bit this year!  So there's something to score: and we can form an early view on his performance as a negotiator up against several prominent counterparties.  

vs China:  Trump is losing, hands down.  The Chinese are playing him like a fiddle, and he's steadily backing down on the tariff war, step by step.  Yet surely, by every standard of US foreign policy as espoused in the past decade by both his and the Democrat party, this is the only game that truly matters.  Sheesh... this really matters!  - did he think he could simply swat Xi aside one spring afternoon while he was mostly busy, errr, earning his Nobel Peace prize, annexing the whole North American land mass, remodelling the White House, peddling his crap merchandise, running feuds against everyone he's ever had a grievance against etc etc etc?

vs Russia:  jury still out, perhaps, but Putin won't be particularly disconcerted by their exchanges to date.  Relative to the extraordinary prior claims made by Trump ("peace in Ukraine in one day!"), and his huffing and puffing about "consequences", the current state of play is pretty demeaning for him.

vs Mexico and Canada:  given how things looked at the start of the whole tariffs round, OK-ish for M & C.  They've mostly stood their ground, and the world hasn't fallen down around their ears by any means.  Makes Trump's early rhetoric look pretty silly - and that's just on trade.  As for annexing Canada ... (I think we can hear the laughter from here - and Greenland probably isn't too worried just now, either.)  

vs India:  jury definitely still out, because India has options.  Trump has dealt his blow - but will he get any pleasure from what happens over the next months and years?  Not at all clear.  How clever is it to send Modi scuttling to Beijing, hmm?

vs Starmer:  surely, 2-1 to Trump.  Starmer has chosen to grovel, in return for some relative 'gains' (negatively defined, which is the only thing we can say) when compared to the EC, see below.  But it has suited Trump to give a little pat on the head to the biggest arse-licker, just pour encourager les autres.

vs the EC:  a seriously bad result for the EU, courtesy of the unelected EC which holds much of Europe's fate in their hands.  Feeble stuff.  A bit of a surprise, given how comprehensively the EC wiped the floor with Cameron and May.  But from this distance, that probably tells us more about them than it does about the EC.

vs Iran:  personally, I can't call this one yet.  Need to keep it in view: could tell us quite a lot.

Crazy man, crazy times.

ND

What does von der Leyen / Trump 'deal' say about EU?

The French and Germans don't seem best pleased about what she's done, and we can see why.  There might be several theses or lines of thought on this.

1. It's easy to portray it as craven, but it's solid realpolitik, and shows the EC** in a good light: their strategic priorities (bind USA into European defence / maintain support for Ukraine / stay on reasonable talking terms with Trump) were clear and they did the necessary in a decisive & fairly expeditious way. 
2. It's an existential triumph for the EC qua bureaucracy-priesthood, not only on the basis of 1 above, but because von der Leyen's people roundly ignored the national governments and have got clean away with it.  German & French vetoes?  They're history.
3. It's a tactical triumph for those wily EC negotiators: their preferred stratagem is to grind down the other side by dragging negotiations out into endless detail / prevarication / cherry-picking / make-believe governance issues (see Brexit); but when faced with an emergency, they still came up with the goods.  Knowing that Trump just lurves Big Numbers and of course Done Deals, they've "committed" to bizarre amounts of imports from the USA, and there isn't a cat's chance in Hell that these commitments can be honoured.  But the Dumb Donald goes home with his triumph (his own people certainly ain't gonna tell him he's been suckered - and maybe he knows it anyway but just loves the immediate optics)  and life carries on.
4. It suits DE and FR to bellyache and blame von der Leyen, but they know there was little alternative, and have let her do the deed - & front for it.  (But where, ultimately, does 'strategic bellyaching' lead?  Surely, only an ever-growing Euroscepticism across the whole continent?) 

Some of the above are perfectly mutually consistent.  Any other views?

ND

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** I.e. the very real Brussels priesthood, not the abstract political entity known as the EU

The last post on Greece before the Euro exit?

Really, this is unlikely to be the last post on Greece, but it could be the last one before Grexit.

Interestingly today the EU Commission - the hotbed of fundamentalists who put the EU before everything (except their wallets which are supported by it)  is making all sorts of soothing noises in the EU media about how Greece's new proposals are just great and a deal can be sealed.

On the other hand the IMF is in a quandary - the IMF supports real basket case countries on the rule that it must not actively support bust countries and piss away the wealth of the world's poorest countries into basket case situations. Unfortunately for Greece, it current falls foul of this basic criteria.

As such the IMF should technically force a default here is Greece fails to pay. That means the EU will have to find the money to pay the IMF at the end of the week. They will do this via the ECB and possibly by the European Stability Mechanism which was sort of designed to enforce the will of Eurofudge.

I don't know whether the Greek plan is in fact new or just the latest in the bizarre rantings of the mental communists the Greeks elected to run their show.

I guess we will find out today whether the mother of all Euro Fudge is being baked or if even the EU Commission has lost its power over Germany and the will of the majority of EU citizens to stop throwing good money after bad.