The Week Ahead: The Primaries, Congress, North Korea Summit

With Jane Clayson

Primaries to watch. Congress back to work. Summit reality check. Top reporters open their notebooks and share what to watch for this week.

Eliana Johnson, White House reporter for Politico. (@elianayjohnson)

Sahil Kapur, national political reporter for Bloomberg politics. (@sahilkapur)

Ishaan Tharoor, foreign affairs writer at the Washington Post. (@ishaantharoor)

The Washington Post: "On trade and North Korea, Trump tries to play disrupter" — "The battle lines are drawn. After the Trump administration moved to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from U.S. allies in Europe and North America, retaliatory measures were announced and angry messages sent.

On Saturday, finance ministers from the six other Group of Seven member nations issued a stern warning to their American counterpart, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, expressing their 'unanimous concern and disappointment' with the United States.

'We’re concerned that these actions are actually not conducive to helping our economy, they actually are destructive, and that is consistently held across the six countries,' said Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau, whose country will host Trump and other G-7 leaders in Quebec beginning Friday.

The French finance minister described the bloc as the 'G-6 plus one,' underscoring the anger with Washington. 'I’ve been to these meetings for a long time,' observed Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso. 'But this is a very rare case where opposition against the United States was unanimous.'

The Trump administration insists the backlash is overblown, arguing that Trump's moves are a long-overdue 'rebalancing' of global trade. But the consensus among most experts and U.S. firms is that the tariffs will backfire; a trade war will raise costs, hurt job growth and damage the U.S. economy."

Politico: "Trump fumes, but Sessions may have the upper hand" — "Trump has for months obsessed publicly over the perceived disloyalty of his attorney general, tweeting again this week that he wished he’d picked someone else for the job. In private, Trump has leaned on Sessions to reverse his decision to recuse himself from Mueller’s sprawling probe — and his firing now over a refusal to do so, some say, would bolster Mueller’s case that Trump has tried to block that investigation from proceeding.

The president is aware that Sessions may have the upper hand, according to two senior administration officials, and his unrelenting campaign against his attorney general is in part fueled by that knowledge."

Rudy Giuliani came out swinging yesterday. Bold claims of presidential power. Pardons. Saying President Trump could shoot James Comey and still not face indictment. The U.S. and Canada – a staredown over trade and tariffs ahead of the G7 meeting in Quebec. Who blinks first? The North Korea summit –on, again. Congress – back on the Hill. Big primaries nationwide tomorrow – all eyes on California.

This hour, On Point: The week ahead in Washington and beyond.

- Jane Clayson