When President Donald Trump left his chair at this month’s G20 summit while Africa was discussed and had daughter Ivanka sit in for him, critics blasted it as a breach of diplomatic protocol. But it also drew attention to the growing concern that when it comes to the continent of 1.2 billion people, the U.S. leader has been notably absent.

Six months into office, the Trump administration’s policy toward Africa has been left to drift, observers say. They cite vacant diplomatic posts and a lack of strategic thinking on multiple issues, including extremist threats in East and West Africa and civil war in South Sudan.

It’s always been a struggle to get Washington’s attention on Africa, but “with this administration, I don’t get the sense that it’s even on the map . We’re looking at blank page here,” said Richard Downie, acting director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

A chief concern is that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has yet to appoint an assistant secretary in charge of African affairs, the top post in charge of Africa policy.

That has “stymied” State Department operations, said Steve McDonald, global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington. “Ongoing, day-to-day things don’t get decided on.”

In addition, there is still no permanent Africa director at the National Security Council. It is the only region without one.

This month the Trump administration delayed a decision on whether to lift sanctions on Sudan, prompting Sudan’s president to order that all negotiations with the U.S. be frozen until mid-October.

Other White House moves suggest that Trump’s “America First” foreign policy is increasing focus on security and counter-terrorism efforts in Africa over the humanitarian and development agenda supported by previous administrations.

Several African nations face threats from extremist groups like Boko Haram and the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab. At the same time, millions of people are at risk of starvation in Somalia, South Sudan and northeastern Nigeria, and potentially violent elections are approaching in regional powers Kenya and Congo.

While the U.S. this month pledged nearly $640 million in humanitarian assistance to alleviate hunger in South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, critics said the aid had been approved months earlier by Congress but delayed by the Trump administration.

Trump moved relatively quickly on security. In March, he approved a Pentagon proposal to “conduct lethal action” in Somalia against al-Shabab. Less than a month later, Defense Secretary James Mattis visited Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa.

Tillerson has yet to visit Africa, according to the State Department’s online log of his travels.

The White House’s 2018 proposed budget reflects the shift toward security and away from aid. It includes a $52 billion increase on defense spending, made possible by proposed cuts to the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development by roughly a third.

The proposed budget would reduce funding from $30 million to $8 million to carry out the closure of the United States African Development Foundation, which supports local enterprises in 30 countries. It also would reduce funding by about $1 billion to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which supports anti-retroviral therapy for over 11 million people, many in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Trump administration also wants downsizing of United Nations peacekeeping missions, many operating in Africa’s most volatile areas. In June, the U.N. reduced its annual peacekeeping budget by more than half a billion dollars.

Current and former U.S. military leaders have warned that deep cuts to diplomacy and aid could jeopardize long-term U.S. interests overseas, and some lawmakers have pledged not to pass the budget as it stands.

“This budget, if fully implemented, would require us to retreat from the world diplomatically or put people at risk,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters in May. “You’d have lot of Benghazis in the making if this thing became law.”

In Somalia, development programs meant to counter the lure of extremism could disappear under the proposed budget. USADF grants have reached nearly 6,000 direct beneficiaries there since 2012, said Abdinasir Ahmed Osman, project coordinator for the Somali Consultants Association, which monitors the work.

In the capital, Mogadishu, USADF-funded programs target youth between 18 and 35 – the same demographic that extremist recruiters go after, Osman said.

“We are giving them skills. We are giving them opportunity,” he said. “They can compare which is better: being in battle, dying without a future, or getting skills and working?”

It’s wrong to say that U.S. diplomatic efforts in Africa are not moving forward, said Brian Neubert, director of the State Department’s Africa Regional Media Hub in Johannesburg.

He said several development and trade initiatives such as Power Africa and the African Growth and Opportunity Act continue and diplomats are going about their work. But South Africa, one of the continent’s top economies, remains without a U.S. ambassador.

“It’s pretty routine at this period, given the other challenges in the world,” Neubert said.

Others disagree, saying that without a president visibly engaged in Africa – especially after President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan – U.S. diplomatic efforts could flounder.

“What you have is a policy vacuum when it comes to basic, critical issues in Africa,” said Steven Feldstein, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration.

“Diplomacy will follow where the president signals his interest.”
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The United States has imposed new sanctions on 18 Iranian individuals and groups it accuses of backing Tehran’s ballistic missile program.

The State Department announced its sanctions Tuesday against two groups linked to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, saying they were involved in ballistic missile research and development.

It further said that Iranian activities in the Middle East “undermine regional stability, security and prosperity.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned five people and seven entities for their support of Iranian military purchases, as well as three other Iranians it says are part of an “Iran-based transnational criminal organization.”

The sanctions freeze any assets the targeted Iranians might have in the U.S. and block Americans from doing business with them.

‘Bad habit’

At the United Nations in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif told VOA that sanctions have “unfortunately become a bad habit” with the United States, and that the U.S. can expect reprisals from Iran.

“It will involve people who have participated in terrorism and extremism in our region as well as supporting expansionism,” Zarif said. He added that an announcement on retaliatory sanctions on the U.S. will come “in due course.”

Middle East Institute senior scholar Zubair Iqbal says the U.S. sanctions will hurt economic growth in Iran, fueling income inequality and giving the hardline conservatives in the country more reason to continue an anti-American and anti-Western attitude.

“Under these circumstances the forces that will be unleashed will likely be not particularly beneficial for the American longer-term interests,” Iqbal told VOA.

Americans held in Iran

Also Tuesday, the U.S. renewed its demand that Iran free three Americans held on what the U.S. calls “fabricated national-security related charges.” It also insisted Iran keep its promise to free former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who has been missing in Iran for more than a decade.

The U.S. announced the new sanctions just a day after it recertified Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement it signed in 2015 with the U.S. and five other world powers.

The deal requires Iran to limit its ability to enrich uranium and take other steps to ensure it is not working to develop nuclear weapons, all in exchange for sanctions relief.

A senior Trump administration official said that while Iran is technically meeting the terms of the nuclear deal, it is “unquestionably in default of the spirit of the agreement,” adding that the U.S. is working with its allies to more strictly enforce the deal going forward.

VOA’s Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.
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Russia says it reserves the right to retaliate in an ongoing dispute with the U.S. over the seizure of two Russian compounds last December by the Obama administration.  Before leaving office, then President Barack Obama also expelled 35 Russian diplomats, accusing them of spying, and saying the actions were to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Now Russia says its patience is running out. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Republicans are in turmoil after their quest to scale back the U.S. government’s role in health care collapsed, leaving in place former President Barack Obama’s health care law, known as Obamacare. As VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Republicans’ failure to pass a health care bill constitutes a major defeat for President Donald Trump, and has emboldened minority Democrats.
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Cake and conversation, it seems, can go only so far to mend longstanding economic rifts between the United States and China.

Three months after President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, shared chocolate cake at an amiable summit in Florida, tensions between the world’s two biggest economies are flaring again.

Just as officials of the two nations prepare to meet Wednesday in Washington, the Trump administration is considering slapping tariffs on steel imports, a step that risks igniting a trade war. For the United States, it’s a perilous option to address a problem caused largely by China’s overproduction of steel.

And Trump is criticizing China again for failing to use its economic leverage to rein in its neighbor and ally, the nuclear rogue state North Korea.

Could this week’s U.S.-China Comprehensive Dialogue produce a meaningful breakthrough in economic relations?

Most China watchers are skeptical.

“I’m not looking for anything worthwhile,” says Derek Scissors, a China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

For one thing, the points of difference between the two countries run deep. For another, Xi faces political pressures at home and won’t want to cause a stir in Beijing.

For all the tensions between the two nations, Trump’s words about Xi himself have remained warm. He has suggested that the personal bond he formed with Xi when the two met April 6-7 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort can overcome fundamental differences on trade and national security. Last week, the president called his Chinese counterpart a “friend of mine,” ”a terrific guy” and “a very special person.”

At a White House event Monday, Trump suggested that the relationship is so strong that he asked during the Florida summit to start exporting U.S. beef to China and that the request was quickly granted. Trump said that the beef industry was so pleased to return to China after a 14-year ban that one executive from Nebraska “hugged me, he wanted to kiss me so badly.”

“We welcome this opportunity,” Kenny Graner, a North Dakota cattle farmer who is president of the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, says of the China market. “They have a middle class that’s growing in income. It’s big, a lot of people.”

After the meeting, the president softened his accusations of abusive Chinese practices, dropped his threat to label China a currency manipulator and expressed optimism that China would pressure North Korea to scale back its nuclear program.

Still, the Trump-Xi relationship has yet to deliver the substantive changes that Trump the candidate had promised voters – a core piece of his mantra to put “America first.” The economic irritants are likely to vex U.S. and Chinese officials this week.

Trump had campaigned on a promise to shrink America’s trade deficits, which he blames for wiping out American factories and manufacturing jobs. The United States last year ran a trade deficit in goods with China of $347 billion, the amount by which imports exceeded exports. It’s by far the widest gap that U.S. has with any country. Trump says China unfairly subsidizes exports.

Take steel. From 2000 to 2016, China accelerated steel production, raising its share of the world market from 15 percent to nearly 50 percent. As Chinese steel poured into the market, global prices fell, hurting American steelmakers. Scissors notes that China has long promised to stop subsidizing steel and to slow production but hasn’t delivered.

The Trump administration responded by invoking a little-used weapon in American trade law that lets the president tax or restrict imports – if a U.S. Commerce Department investigation finds that they imperil national security. (The result of Commerce’s investigation of steel imports is expected soon.) The rationale was that the American military relies on steel for airplanes, ships and other equipment. Steel also goes into roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

The problem is that the United States already blocks most Chinese steel imports. So any tariffs or limits on imports would instead hurt other countries, including such staunch allies as Canada and South Korea.

Scissors says the United States could try to coordinate sanctions against China by countries that do import Chinese steel.

David Dollar, a former World Bank and U.S. Treasury official who is now at the Brookings Institution, thinks Xi isn’t likely to make a bold move to cut Chinese steelmaking capacity – or enact other economic reforms – in advance of the Chinese communist party’s National Congress this fall. At the meeting, Xi will want to further tighten his grip on the party.

What’s more, the European Union and others are likely to lash back if the U.S. imposes sanctions on foreign steel, thereby running the risk of a broader trade war.

Then there’s North Korea. As a presidential candidate, Trump attacked China for refusing to pressure Pyongyang to back off from developing nuclear weapons. After the Mar-a-Lago summit, though, Trump praised Beijing for agreeing to help deal with North Korea. As a reward, he abandoned his vow to accuse China of manipulating its currency to benefit Chinese exporters.

This month, North Korea defiantly proceeded with its first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Trump tweeted his complaint:

“Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter. So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try!”

Brookings’ Dollar says the administration will likely continue to be disappointed.

“China is not going to do anything dramatic” to pressure North Korea, he says. “They don’t want that regime to collapse” and thereby destabilize the Korean peninsula and likely send North Korean refugees into China.

Overall, Dollar expects more turbulence between Washington and Beijing. The Obama administration, he notes, had kept the relationship stable despite economic differences by working with China on such issues as the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. But Trump has pulled out of the Paris deal and denounced the Iran pact.

“We’re going to see more volatility in the U.S.-China relationship than we’ve seen in years,” Dollar says.

 
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North Korea does not have the ability to strike the United States with “any degree of accuracy” and while its missiles have the range, they lack the necessary guidance capability, Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva said on Tuesday.

“I … am not sanguine that the test on the Fourth of July demonstrates that they have the capacity to strike the United States with any degree of accuracy or reasonable confidence or success,” Selva said while appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Earlier this month North Korea said it had conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and that it had mastered the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on the missile.

Pyongyang’s state media said the test successfully verified the atmospheric re-entry of the warhead, which experts say may be able to reach the U.S. state of Alaska.

“What the experts tell me is that the North Koreans have yet to demonstrate the capacity to do the guidance and control that would be required,” Selva, the second highest-ranking U.S. military official, added.

South Korea’s intelligence agency also does not believe North Korea has secured re-entry capabilities for its ICBM program.

South Korea on Monday proposed military talks with North Korea, the first formal overture to Pyongyang by the government of President Moon Jae-in, to discuss ways to avoid hostile acts near the heavily militarized border.

 
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The United States on Monday launched the first salvo in the renegotiation of the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), saying its top priority for the talks was shrinking the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico.

In a much-anticipated document sent to lawmakers, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said he would seek to reduce the trade imbalance by improving access for U.S. goods exported to Canada and Mexico under the three-nation pact.

For the first time in a U.S. trade deal, the administration also said it wants an “appropriate” provision to deter currency manipulation by trading partners. The move appeared aimed at future trade deals rather than specifically at Canada and Mexico, which are not considered currency manipulators.

The 17-page document asserted that no country should manipulate its currency exchange rate to gain an unfair competitive advantage, an often-cited complaint about China in past years.

Shortly before the release of the document, President Donald Trump lashed out against trade deals and unfair trade practices, saying he would take more legal and regulatory steps during the next six months to protect American manufacturers.

‘Not earth shattering’

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland said the U.S. list was “part of its internal process” although a source familiar with Canadian government thinking said the document was “not earth shattering.”

Trade experts have argued that shrinking the yawning U.S. trade deficit will not be achieved by revising trade deals but rather by boosting U.S. savings.

“The first bullet point shows their preoccupation with bilateral trade deficits, and that’s unfortunate,” said Chad Brown, a senior fellow and trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s not much that trade policy and trade agreements can do to change those. That’s more of a macroeconomic issue.”

No mention of lumber or dairy products

Among the priorities, Lighthizer said the administration would seek to eliminate a trade dispute mechanism that has largely prohibited the United States from pursuing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against Canadian and Mexican firms.

There was no mention of active disputes between the United States and Canada over softwood lumber and dairy products, but the document targeted a range of agricultural non-tariff barriers, including subsidies and unfair pricing structures, that are currently at the heart of those standoffs.

USTR said it would seek to strengthen NAFTA’s rules of origin to ensure that the pact’s benefits do not go to outside countries and to “incentivize” the sourcing of U.S. goods. It offered no details on such incentives and did not specify how much of a product’s components must originate from NAFTA countries.

No date has been announced for the NAFTA talks, but they are expected in mid-August.

Automaker support stance

Matt Blunt, president of the American Automotive Policy Council, a group representing U.S. automakers, welcomed the decision to include in the list of objectives the removal of regulatory barriers and the provision on currency manipulation.

A spokesman for Ford Motor Co said: “Foreign currency manipulation is the 21st century trade barrier, and we strongly support the inclusion of this top-tier issue in the U.S. negotiating objectives for NAFTA. We look forward to working with the administration to achieve this objective by including strong and enforceable currency prohibitions as part of NAFTA.”

The document also outlined plans to upgrade standards for labor and the environment and govern digital trade. Canada and Mexico have already agreed to upgrade these areas as part of the defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

No reaction from Mexico

Representative Sander Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, said there was nothing in the document that would change the way Mexico treated its workers.

“Mexico has used their workers having no rights and suppressing labor costs as a key part of their industrial policy,” he said, “There is nothing in the summary that assures in these vital aspects that a new NAFTA will be different than the old.”

There was no formal reaction to the letter from Mexican government.

NAFTA called a ‘failure’

Earlier on Monday,  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said NAFTA had been an “unequivocal failure” and should be completely renegotiated.

“We will do everything we can to make this a good agreement and to hold the president at his word and make sure we get a renegotiation,” the head of the 12.5-million-strong union umbrella group told a conference call with reporters.

“If it comes out that it is not a good deal, no deal is better than a bad deal,” Trumka said.

NAFTA has quadrupled trade among the three countries, surpassing $1 trillion in 2015, but the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico exceeded $63 billion last year.

 
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