ANALYSIS: Weary, U.S. allies try to put the Trump storm behind them and regroup ahead of G7 talks in Canada The leaders of the six other G7 countries are putting a brave face on the awkwardly U.S.-dominated opening of their summit in Canada on Friday, saying they were determined to come together and overcome differences. President Donald Trump has left Canada to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and will return to the meeting of the world’s largest economic powers to a changed landscape. Trump skipped a working session at the last minute and attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “dishonest and weak” after Trudeau said Trump had made “false claims” about trade between the U.S. and Canada. Trump’s attacks and threats may have put longstanding and often frayed transatlantic relationships under more strain than they were before his maiden trip to Europe ended with a bruising meeting with NATO’s military leaders. The summit will be held in the wake of “a very unpredictable moment, with important summit meetings” in North Korea and with China, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that NATO’s biggest alliance was in crisis, warning that “aggressive” U.S. moves under President Donald Trump had “weakened” the Western military alliance and raised the prospect of confrontation with Russia. “This is a G6 plus one and a G7 minus one,” Le Drian said. “I can understand the frustration of those who are not going to participate in the presidency of this G7, but we are here together and what counts is what we do together.” However, Trump was not the only head of state in no mood to put up with what he has had to put up with for days. “We all think it’s a mess, and I think we’re going to get some things done,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadian broadcaster CBC. Asked if Trump had a legitimate gripe over trade, Trudeau replied: “No, I don’t think so. His concern about not having a strong G7 and him being able to point to that and say, ‘Look, we were seven and now we’re six’ doesn’t affect me.” “My job is to represent Canadians and the prime minister has shown over a four-year period that we know how to do that and we know how to do it in a positive way.” French President Emmanuel Macron also played down the importance of the G7, telling Europe 1 radio: “It’s a G6 plus one, no? Because the United States decided to leave the room before it even started.” Britain’s Brexit negotiator David Frost, a former head of the trade department at the World Trade Organization, called Trump’s criticism of Canadian trade “pretty petty.” Trump left the G7 working lunch abruptly on Tuesday to fly to Washington for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on denuclearization, then fly home for the funeral of Senator John McCain, his political foe who died on Saturday. Canadian and French officials said Trump had left as he had earlier indicated that he would, without a joint statement, after the allies’ earlier positions were largely ignored. “President Trump has shown himself to be once again unwilling to jointly state these elements with other leaders at the G7, despite having done so previously at two consecutive NATO summits and the G7 summit in Japan,” European Union President Donald Tusk told reporters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was quoted as saying on Wednesday that Canada was doing its best to find ways to compromise. “I can understand that. But still I would have liked to see the six allies at the table,” she said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also felt the United States had left the summit with no formal joint statement from the group at all, saying he was sure Trump wanted to make a decision. The G7 is seen by its members as a forum to find common ground on important global issues such as global trade, climate change, security and the impact of technology. But the leaders’ summit is not a formal decision-making body in the seven-strong group, which comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States, and which holds the annual World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Instead, it produces a closing statement saying the leaders have “underscored the importance of fighting protectionism.” Trudeau said on Thursday that even if Trump had withdrawn from the summit, there was a clear intention to reach a communique. “If President Trump had decided to, as he has done in the past, pull out of the summit, then clearly the communique would have been a way to make sure that the conversations we had during the summit were documented and available for people to see,” he said. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday told a small group of reporters that the United States would work with the world’s largest economies to make “prosperity for the American people.” U.S. stocks fell on Thursday after another tumultuous day of trading on Wall Street on the eve of the two-day G7 meetings in Quebec, which will be focused on finding a common approach with the United States. The three-day summit kicks off on Friday and will be Trump’s first major test of whether he can unite world leaders and show that he can deliver a coherent G7 statement after having failed to persuade allies to keep the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. It will be the first meeting since Trump upended G7 and transatlantic relations by refusing to endorse a G7 statement and demanding more than $50 billion in U.S. tariffs on the European Union. Trudeau will also have to contend with French President Emmanuel Macron on several hot-button issues when they are scheduled to hold a meeting on Saturday. Trump is also expected to visit North Korea after the summit to meet leader Kim Jong Un, whose invitation was coordinated with Canada. Trump said on Twitter last week that he would meet Kim “with or without” pre-conditions and that the United States and North Korea were “already making big progress.” French officials said North Korea’s invitation was only for talks on North Korean denuclearization. Japan is hosting a gathering of Asian and Western nations aimed at countering North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Trump had been expected to call on NATO members to spend more on defense during his time in Brussels last month. Asked if he would discuss defense spending, Le Drian said that would be up to Trump, but that it would be “completely normal” to discuss it in relation to the situation in Europe. Some allies have called on Trump to reaffirm U.S. commitment to NATO, warning he might seek other alliances instead. Trump has repeatedly questioned U.S. engagement in NATO and called for members to increase defense spending, saying members who have not met the two-percent target should face trade penalties. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian reiterated France’s position that “France is not ready to raise the target,” but noted that the defense budget of NATO members was already on the rise. Le Drian’s comments echoed those of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said the alliance “must remain relevant and that’s why our efforts must focus on reaching the 2 percent goal.” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Handelsblatt business daily that he hoped Trump’s visit to Europe had brought to the surface the “real transatlantic problem” of a lack of joint strategy between Germany and the United States. “I hope it will be possible to build a true transatlantic alliance,” he said. German leaders will push for changes to the international tax regime ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July to make it more difficult for companies to artificially lower their taxable profits. And Merkel also reiterated that European Commission efforts to toughen up oversight of industrial internet giants could be a focal point for discussions with Trump and others.