[Read more about the growing recession fears in Europe.]

The president’s aggressive approach to trading partners comes as developed and developing nations are already pulling back on the rapid globalization that dominated two decades of economic policymaking. Global flows of foreign direct investment fell by 13 percent last year, to their lowest level since the financial crisis, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reported last week.

It was the third consecutive annual decline, which officials blamed on multinational corporations bringing cash back to the United States after Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul. Officials warned that trade tensions posed a “downward risk” for a rebound in investment growth this year.

Mr. Trump has made steady use of tariffs to punish trading partners, like China, Europe, Canada and Mexico, that he says have destroyed American jobs by flooding the United States with cheap products and erecting unfair economic barriers at home. The president and his top officials insist that the trade war is lifting the American economy and that any slowdown in global growth is not related to the administration’s trade policies.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in an interview this month that he did not “think in any way that the slowdowns you’re seeing in parts of the world are a result of trade tensions at the moment.” He noted that growth in Asia and Europe had been tapering off before trade talks between the United States and China broke down in early May.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited China’s slowdown as proof that his trade war is working, telling reporters last week that the United States has “picked up $14 trillion in net worth of the United States.”

“And China has gone down probably by $20 trillion,” he continued. “There’s a tremendous gap.”

But a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy — one that’s deeply enmeshed in global trade networks — affects other economies.

“China is the biggest trading nation in the world,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “The idea that you could slow down the global growth engine and not affect other countries is just not credible.”