President Donald Trump is on a mission to sell the United
States to the global business community just as his historic impeachment trial
gets underway in the Senate.
When the trial reconvenes Tuesday afternoon in Washington,
Trump will be thousands of miles away trying to charm global CEOs at the World
Economic Forum in Switzerland.
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His participation in the annual gathering in the Alpine ski
resort of Davos will provide a conspicuous split-screen moment in a presidency
familiar with them. The two-day Swiss visit will test Trump’s ability to
balance his anger over being impeached with a desire to project leadership on
the world stage.
Speculation mounted that Trump would cancel the trip due to
the trial, but aides said the president remained focused on producing results
for the American people.
Trump, who was scheduled to arrive early Tuesday in
Switzerland, said he was attending the forum to encourage businesses to invest
in the U.S.
“We’re now where the action is,” he said at a farmers’
convention Sunday in Texas.
The president will give a speech at the forum and meet with
world leaders and business executives.
Swooping in for his second appearance at the conference, Trump
was set to depart on Wednesday, jetting back to a Washington that will be
consumed by the impeachment trial.
The Democratic-controlled House impeached the Republican
president last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after it
was revealed that he had pressed Ukraine’s president to announce investigations
into former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat and a Trump political rival.
Trump withheld foreign aid that Congress had approved for the Eastern European
nation and dangled the prospect of an Oval Office meeting as leverage.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and argues that Democrats want
to remove him from office because they know they can’t deny him reelection in
November. Trump would be forced to leave office if convicted, but the
Republican-controlled Senate is expected to acquit him.
Trump said he would attend the Davos forum despite the
awkward timing because he wants to encourage businesses to come back to the
U.S.
“Our country is the hottest country anywhere in the world,”
he said at the White House last week. “There’s nothing even close. I’ll be
meeting the biggest business leaders in the world, getting them to come here.”
The White House has not named any of the business leaders
Trump is set to meet with. But he is scheduled to hold talks with the leaders
of Iraq, Pakistan, Switzerland and Iraq’s self-governing Kurdish region, as
well as the forum’s founder, the White House said.
Trump also will have his first meeting with the new European
Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to hold the
position.
That meeting could be the most significant, said analyst
Matt Goodman, given Trump’s many disagreements with Europe over tax and trade
policy, like a new digital levy by the French that will force American tech
giants such as Amazon and Google to pay up.
“She’s new and she’s formidable,” said Goodman, who studies
international economic policy as a senior vice president at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
Trump has smarted over the French tax, and his
administration has announced plans to impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 100%
on cheese, wine, lipstick and other French imports. France has threatened to
fight back.
But after speaking to Trump on Monday, French President
Emmanuel Macron tweeted that they had a “great discussion” about the digital
tax and “will work together on a good agreement to avoid tariff escalation.”
The U.S. has also threatened to impose retaliatory duties on
$7.5 billion worth of European airplanes, cheese, wine and other goods in a
separate dispute over subsidies for Airbus, a competitor to Chicago-based
Boeing Co.
Trump has sought to wring trade concessions from the EU by
threatening tariffs on German autos, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Trump heads to Switzerland as just the third American
president, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, to face a Senate impeachment
trial. Johnson and Clinton were acquitted by the Senate.
There is precedent for international travel by an impeached
U.S. leader. During his impeachment over an affair with a White House intern,
Clinton visited Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He
traveled to Jordan for King Hussein’s funeral in February 1999, just a few days
before he was acquitted.
Two days after acquittal, Clinton went to Mexico on a state
visit.
Trump is planning to make his first visit to India at the end of February, probably after the conclusion of his impeachment trial. He also has talked about traveling soon to Beijing, although he has given no dates, to open a new round of trade talks with China.
(HuffPost)