Residents of the hilltop Sicilian town of Taormina are cheering and waving as the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies pass by — a rarity for global summits, where ordinary people are usually kept far away for security reasons. Crowds lined the route as Donald Trump and the other six G-7 leaders made their way from Taormina's famed ancient Greek theater, where they took the traditional G-7 photo, to the five-star San Domenico Palace, where meetings were taking place The leaders made a brief stop along the way to take in a breathtaking view of the sea. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn was reported to have said that economic considerations would prevail if they collide with measures to curtail global warming under the 2015 Paris climate accord. A German government spokesman says trade surpluses like the one that's provoking President Donald Trump's ire are the result of market factors and are "neither good nor bad." [...] speaking in Berlin, Streiter said Germany's current account surplus — the broadest measure of trade and investment flows — reflects economic factors that the German government can't directly do anything about. Oxfam activists wore masks representing the seven leaders and had a banner with the words "Paris Agreement," the deal to fight global warming which U.S. President Trump has threatened to abandon. At a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday, Macron insisted on the need for "reciprocity" on trade and said Europeans sometimes had a "too naive" approach on trade deals. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's views, Italy's leader is pushing for the G-7 summit to issue a strong statement on both fighting climate change and on handling the vast flow of migrants and refugees in need of help around the world. The chairman of the European Union's council says he agrees with President Donald Trump that the international community should be "tough, even brutal" on terrorism and Islamic State. Tusk said that "I totally agreed with him when he said the international community, the G7, the United States, Europe — should be tough, even brutal, with terrorism and ISIS" an acronym for the extremist group fighting in Syria and Iraq. The hot-button issues of climate change, trade and migration threaten to throw a summit of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies off its consensus game, with U.S. President Donald Trump cast as the spoiler-in-chief. Endorsing measures to combat terror is expected to find easy agreement, especially after the attack in Manchester on a pop music concert that left 22 people dead.
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