Anger Flares Up as Group of 7 Heads to Quebec

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will skip most of the second day of a summit with allies this weekend, the White House said late Thursday, as he engaged in a contentious war of words over trade on the eve of a gathering that will underscore his isolation from the leaders of the world’s largest economies.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, announced that Trump will leave Canada at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, well before scheduled sessions on climate change, clean energy and oceans. He will attend an early-morning session on “women’s empowerment,” but he will be gone before any joint statement is issued by the other leaders.

Earlier Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada lashed out at Trump for imposing tariffs on their steel and aluminum industries. They called it an illegal economic assault on their countries that is unanimously opposed by the other leaders of the Group of 7 who will gather Friday in a sleepy village in Quebec for their annual summit meeting.

“The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be,” Macron said Thursday in an especially acerbic tweet. “Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force.”

Trudeau said at a news conference with Macron that “we are going to defend our industries and our workers” and “show the U.S. president that his unacceptable actions are hurting his own citizens.”

Trump responded with his trademark Twitter bluntness a few hours later, signaling that he has no intention of relenting on his aggressive trade demands and cares little about the diplomatic niceties that usually constrain public disagreements between the leaders of friendly nations.

“Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers,” Trump wrote. “The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out.”

He added, with a hint of sarcasm: “Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.”

Trump is scheduled to arrive Friday morning at the meeting for a gathering that traditionally includes a moment of global camaraderie — the “family photo” that captures presidents and prime ministers smiling for the camera.

This year there won’t be many grins.

Trump is the black sheep of this family, the estranged sibling who decided to pick fights with his relatives just before arriving to dinner. The dispute, Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, acknowledges, is “much like a family quarrel,” but with the potential for vast diplomatic and economic consequences for the world.

The anger of U.S. allies over Trump’s decision to impose tariffs is palpable.

“Patently absurd” is what Liam Fox, the British trade minister, called them. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said they were “illegal,” while Trudeau said they were “insulting and totally unacceptable” — and that was in the carefully worded public statement. In a phone call with Trump, he was said to be even more blunt.

Before the summit, finance ministers from the other six countries that form the Group of 7, or G-7, condemned Trump’s trade decisions in an extraordinary rebuke of a member nation’s president. And some of the leaders themselves have threatened to boycott the usual end-of-meeting communiqué. A senior Canadian official said a statement by only Trudeau, the gathering’s host, is possible.

Asked about the upcoming discussions in Canada, Merkel, the famously taciturn leader of Germany, said they would be “difficult.”

There have been disagreements within the G-7 in the past, including a long chill between the Europeans and President George W. Bush over the Iraq War. When Ronald Reagan put missiles in Europe, his counterparts branded him a cowboy who would start World War III.

But rarely — if ever — has there been the kind of visceral and unanimous outrage at an American president among the nation’s most important allies, who for decades have seen the closest of relationships with the leader of the free world as a paramount foreign policy priority.

Trump has repeatedly poked his counterparts in the eye — ignoring their pleas to remain a part of the Paris climate treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and the Iran nuclear deal, and more recently by branding their steel and aluminum industries threats to national security and therefore subject to tariffs.

So when Trump disembarks from Air Force One on Friday morning for a day and a half of closed-door meetings in the resort town of La Malbaie, the president can expect a subzero reception for what some observers have begun calling the “G6+1,” a reference to the political and diplomatic isolation that Trump has created for himself with his unilateral trade and security actions against his friends.

Cliff Kupchan, a veteran foreign policy analyst, said he expected a “very frosty dynamic” and predicted Trump is “going to get an earful from all of them.” Dan Price, who guided Bush through many economic summits, said the other six leaders should express their concerns to Trump “even at the risk of offending a notoriously thin-skinned president.”

And Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that because of “real indignation and real frustration” on the part of European leaders who are extremely angry at Trump, the “venting process is likely to continue” throughout the meeting. The ill will among U.S. allies is a striking contrast to the praise Trump has heaped on North Korea, one of the country’s most enduring adversaries, before his historic meeting next week with Kim Jong Un, the country’s normally reclusive leader.

The president, who is scheduled to fly Saturday from Quebec to Singapore for the meeting, has called Kim — the leader of a country once described as part of an “axis of evil” — a “very honorable” man, even as he clashes repeatedly with his counterparts in the world’s longest-lasting democracies.

Trump’s feud with the allies is also risking a go-it-alone approach to China’s trade practices even as many trade experts have called for a unified front by Western economies to confront China. The disputes with the United States have frustrated European leaders, who are eager for a joint effort that might pressure Beijing for change. Leaders had hoped to use the meeting to help formulate a strategy to combat China’s surplus steel, but they now appear more likely to focus on their own trade divisions instead.

“The isolation from our G-7 allies undermines the United States’ ability to work with them to confront real challenges in Russia or China or the Middle East,” Price said. “I certainly hope the president and his team will take the opportunity presented by the G-7 summit to find a path forward.”

Others are less sanguine about that possibility.

Trump’s decision to abandon the Iran deal was particularly infuriating to leaders in Europe, where businesses and banks had been eager to begin commercial activities in Iran with the lifting of sanctions. But because the president decided to withdraw the United States from the agreement, European businesses are likely to avoid doing business in Iran for fear of risking sanctions that could keep them out of the much more lucrative U.S. markets.

“There’s no underestimating the level of anger and frustration,” Dubowitz said. “For the Europeans, this is really a question of sovereignty. It’s a direct challenge, in the case of Iran, to their national security.”

Still, the more immediate source of friction with Trump is on trade. Efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement have stalled in bitter disagreement. And the decision by the United States to claim national security concerns has infuriated even the most stalwart allies, who view it as a transparent — and ridiculous — attempt to get around the rules set by the World Trade Organization. Trump has sent no signals that he is willing to back off. In remarks to reporters Wednesday, Kudlow insisted that the president does not intend to be constrained by the global trading rules set up by his predecessors.

“That system has been broken in the last 20 years-plus. The World Trade Organization, for example, has become completely ineffectual,” he said, adding later: “International multilateral organizations are not going to determine American policy. I think the president has made that very clear.”

The allies at the G-7 are unlikely to give in, either. The Canadians and the European Union have filed cases against the United States at the World Trade Organization, and have announced retaliatory tariffs.

French officials say President Emmanuel Macron is likely to urge Trump to relent, arguing that he will damage the U.S. economy if he persists. Other allies are hoping that U.S. businesses will pressure Trump to back off once the tariffs begin affecting their supply chains and profits.

Clues to how the meetings in Canada have gone may be found in the body language of Trump and his counterparts as they pose for pictures before and after their sessions.

Kupchan said he will be looking for the expressions on the faces of the allies: “Merkel sitting next to Trump, having just talked about Iran, with a massive frown, looking the other way,” he said. “That’s my best bet.”