Arc de Trumphe

From the you couldn't make it up dept comes Statist France's Macron lecturing an American President on the importance of free trade and the dangers of protectionism! Whether Macron's Thatcherite union and employment reforms come to fruition or get crushed under the barricades remains to be seen but his dressing down of Tourettes Trump and his Poujadist tendencies was a poke in the irony indeed.

Of course its not a one way street as Macron sported the mandatory environmentalist badge de honeur and the standard appeasement and collaborationist approach to Iran which Trump seems ready to resist -for the moment as you always have to add with the mercurial president.

Trump's Sinophobia and his economic nationalism is characterised best by his infamous 'China is eating our lunch' whinge as if the pie is of a certain limited size and everyone must get an equal portion. The irony barometer is indeed off the scale when communist China starts lecturing Trump as well on the inadvisability of protectionism....