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It was left to Trump’s aides to figure out how to explain Trump’s airing of grievances against trading partners instead of focusing on his coming talks with Kim, which the president’s supporters hope will provide him with a major foreign policy win.

Irritants will be overcome

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised European countries for helping to bring about the North Korea summit, alluding to their enforcement of sanctions against Pyongyang. He expressed confidence that U.S. relations with other G7 countries would continue to move forward, despite the weekend clash in Canada.

“There are always irritants in relationships,” Pompeo told reporters. He dismissed as “ludicrous” the notion that Kim would decide he could not trust the United States because of the G7 dispute.

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Trump was “rattling the cages right now on trade,” insisting there was no reason to believe there would be any negative fallout for the North Korea summit. “These are really unrelated baskets of issues.”

But one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged: “The timing for all this is not very good at all.”

The prospect that Trump could be moving toward an even greater protectionist trade policy is likely to chill financial markets worried about tit-for-tat escalation that could lead to a full-blown global trade war.

“Business confidence, and subsequently capital spending, is at risk if this tension continues through the summer,” said Tai Hui, J.P. Morgan Asset Management Chief Market Strategist for Asia Pacific. “This could cast a long shadow over global growth, which has rebounded in recent weeks after a soft start to the year.”