'Isolationism is wrong medicine'
US President Barack Obama warned Wednesday against isolationist tendencies in America and elsewhere, calling it "the wrong medicine" to fix legitimate concerns about globalization.
While Obama did not mention Donald Trump by name, he took a clear swipe at the Republican presidential candidate's heated anti-trade rhetoric during a "Three Amigos" summit with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts.
"Even if we wanted to we can't seal ourselves off from the rest of the world," Obama said in a speech to the Canadian parliament after trilateral talks.
"In an integrated, global economy the solution is not for us to try to shut ourselves off from the world," he earlier told a news conference in Ottawa -- held as Trump repeated a threat to renegotiate or walk out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
"We've had times throughout our history where anti-immigration sentiment is exploited by demagogues," said Obama. "But guess what? They kept coming."
"Unless you are one of the first Americans, unless you are a native American, somebody, somewhere in your past showed up from some place else. And they didn't always have papers."
Six days after Britain's vote to exit the European Union, felt on both sides of the Atlantic, the shock British decision to go it alone topped the agenda of talks in Ottawa.
Obama recognised there existed "genuine concerns" about the impact on long-term global growth if the Brexit goes ahead.
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