G7 summit reveals longtime allies’ devastating loss of faith in US: ex-Trump official

U.S. President Donald Trump first attended a G7 Summit in Taormina, Italy in 2017, angrily berating North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies for — as he saw it — not carrying their weight in the alliance. Now, nine years later, Trump is in Évian-les-Bains, France at the 2026 G7. Trump's hostility to NATO hasn't changed, but former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, in the UK-based i Paper, lays out a key difference between Trump attending the G7 in 2017 and 2018 and Trump at the G7 in 2027: NATO allies' greatly diminished faith in the United States.

The conservative Taylor was serving in the first Trump administration when, in June 2018, the president attended that year's G7 in Charlevoix, Quebec in Canada. In the i Paper, Taylor recalls being on pins and needles and worrying about what Trump would do at the 2018 G7; now, Taylor laments, Trump's enablers are encouraging his tantrums at the 2026 G7.

"In June 2018, I sat inside the White House Situation Room, dreading what was about to happen," the former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official remembers. "We'd just finished preparing for Donald Trump's trip to Canada for a Group of Seven (G7) meeting, a gathering of the world's most powerful democracies. And the U.S. president was pouting. He didn't want to go. Aides had talked him out of skipping the summit, but my worry was that his attendance might actually be worse. He did not disappoint."

Taylor continues, "He arrived late. He lectured the leaders of America's closest friends about trade as though they were errant suppliers. At one point, he flicked a Starburst sweet across the table at the then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel — 'Here, Angela. Don't say I never give you anything' — a gesture that managed to be both petulant and weirdly revealing. He left early."

According to Taylor — who is now very much in the conservative Never Trump camp — he cringed when Trump's "talking points," in June 2017, sounded like they came from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But during the 2026 G7, Taylor observes, Trump's loyalists are cheering him on — not trying to rein him in — while European leaders have lost faith in the United States.

"What looked like a tantrum in 2018 has now become national policy," Taylor laments. "And as Trump wraps up another G7 meeting, it's clear that his mood swings, and strong opinions about who America's real pals should be, have upended the world order for a generation. The data shows it."

Taylor continues, "A new survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations found that just 11 per cent of Europeans now regard the United States as an ally. In other words, nine out of 10 of our closest friends no longer see us as 'friends,' which is a record low. Indeed, support for the transatlantic alliance has been cut in half since Trump returned to office. He arrived in France this week as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance. Diminished not only in tanks or dollars, but in the only currency that has ever made the West more than the sum of its parts, which is trust…. So, the G7 nations this week seemed to be doing what they believe they need to do: moving on."