Donald Trump and Democrats fail to reach funding breakthrough

Donald Trump and congressional Democrats failed to reach a breakthrough on border security funding after a summit at the White House on Wednesday, as the US government shutdown looked set to enter its third week.

The session marked the first face-to-face encounter between the US president and top lawmakers since before the partial shutdown, which has left as many as 800,000 federal workers without pay, closed national parks and curtailed the release of some economic data.

Despite the rising economic and social costs of the budgetary stand-off, the meeting ended with both sides digging into their positions amid continued acrimony, offering little hope of a quick resolution to the impasse.

As she exited the White House, Nancy Pelosi — who is poised to become speaker of the House of Representatives on Thursday as Democrats take control of the lower chamber of Congress — reiterated that she would immediately move to pass legislation reopening the government with no funding for a wall at the southern border with Mexico, one of Mr Trump’s signature demands.

But both the White House and Republicans in the Senate, where Mr Trump’s party still holds a majority, said this solution was unacceptable, offering no clear path to a deal. Earlier in the day Mr Trump said at a meeting with his cabinet that the shutdown would last as “long as it takes” to address border security concerns, suggesting he was prepared for a protracted fight.

However, he did ask senior lawmakers to return to the White House again on Friday for another round of talks, offering a new window for compromise.

Many congressional Democrats believe they have the upper hand in the negotiations, and Mr Trump will be the one to eventually cave-in with Americans blaming him primarily for the shutdown.

“They are now feeling the heat. It is not helping the president, it is not helping the Republicans, to be the owners of the shutdown,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, after the White House meeting.

Mr Trump had set up Wednesday’s gathering with top lawmakers in the White House’s situation room — where senior officials meet in moments of crisis — to dramatise conditions on the US southern border. But in advance of the session, Democratic aides on Capitol Hill were already dismissing it as a stunt.

“It is not a meeting, it is a briefing. We expect a one-sided, non-factual presentation. Expect Democrats to again have to correct the record in the meeting and afterward,” a senior Democratic aide said.

Trump administration officials have accused Democrats of failing to give an inch in the negotiations, forcing the shutdown. “[We] presented a good-faith offer to resolve this issue and achieve a principled compromise — only to find out after Christmas that the Dems stopped negotiations altogether,” Mike Pence, the vice-president, wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

The shutdown comes at a difficult moment in Mr Trump’s presidency, as he faces criticism for the hollowing-out of the most experienced members of his team with the departures of Jim Mattis as defence secretary and John Kelly as chief of staff.

In addition, there are growing concerns about volatility in the stock market, trade tensions with China and the possibility of a significant slowdown in the global economy.