Following last weekend's G-7 meeting for the world's most important finance ministers and central bankers in Whistler, Canada, at which the US was introduced as a "+1" to the G-6, and whose positioned was "condemned" by the rest of the Developed World, this week's G-7 showdown in Toronto where Trump will also be present, promises to be a historic event, one in which Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to challenge Donald Trump on trade and climate, and warned the lack of room for compromise means leaders may fail to agree on a final statement, an unprecedented event at a summit of the world's 7 most advanced nations.

Speaking before German lawmakers on Wednesday, two days before the G-7 summit starts in Canada, Merkel said that Trump’s "America First" doctrine shows that “we have a serious problem with multilateral agreements." She added that failure to reach common ground could lead to the highly unusual step of host Canada issuing a concluding statement not agreed by all participants, according to Bloomberg.

Merkel said she plans to speak to Trump specifically about trade at the G-7. “There will be some controversial discussions” at the gathering, she told lawmakers. Germany will make sure that what was agreed on trade and climate at the last G-7 summit and at a G-20 meeting will be maintained in joint statements from the two-day meeting in Quebec "if any are agreed."

We doubt Trump will be too "burned" by that statement.

Separately, in an interview with Bloomberg TV, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called Trump a "fully fledged American isolationist" and, in regurgitating the familiar script according to which if you're not with us (the globalists), then you are a pawn of Russia (or China), said that the U.S. leader has opened the door to the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping to play a bigger role on the global stage.

Maybe Fogh should first thank those establishment institutions - mostly the central banks and their backers - that enabled the enraged middle class to elect such officials as Putin. Unless, of course, the former NATO head has a problem with democracy when it does not go his way.

“The world is on fire. Wherever you look you have conflicts,” the former Danish prime minister, who now runs his own neocon consultancy, Rasmussen Global, said. “Now you are lacking American global leadership and this is why autocrats have a more easy game to play.”

Well, in that case the military-industrial complex, Mr. Rasmussen's former superiors when he headed NATO, should be delighted: just think of all the GDP-boosting conflicts that are about to be unleashed.

As for Trump, since taking office he has pulled the U.S. out of international accords on climate change and Iran’s nuclear program, ignited a global trade conflict with key U.S. partners including the European Union and publicly slammed allies like Germany for not spending enough on defense. Or, as the White House summarized in a fact sheet published June 4 to mark 500 days of the Trump administration, "America is winning on the world stage."