The Telegraph writes that American officials confirmed North Korea's claim on Tuesday to have successfully launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), suggesting Pyongyang was now capable of attacking the continental US and provoking immediate international condemnation. Russia and China laid out a plan for defusing tensions, suggesting that Pyongyang halt nuclear and missile tests while the US and South Korea refrain from large-scale military exercises. The joint statement, issued after talks between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, came as analysts suggested the test could represent a game-changing moment in the world's most dangerous nuclear stand-off. The US military tracked the missile's steep parabolic path for 37 minutes. Experts said a flatter trajectory might give the missile a range of approximately 4,160 miles, a marked improvement on previous models and one that would put Alaska within reach. Pentagon officials told NBC News they believed North Korea had successfully launched its first ICBM. They said it had a two-stage design of a type not seen before and its range was greater than the 3,400 miles required to be classed as ICBM.

The Washington Post opines: As the Friday start of the Group of 20 economic summit in Hamburg approaches, the Trump administration represents one of the chief sources of uncertainty in global trade. It has been just over two months since President Trump ordered a review of how steel imports affect American national security, which could usher in protectionist measures on a wide range of products from a wide range of countries...The question is whether a unilateral American invocation of the president's rarely used power to create national security exceptions to normal trade law is the right way to deal with this situation. Probably not. Given China's relatively small U.S. market share , and the fact that anti-dumping and countervailing measures already apply to China, it is not clear what could be accomplished through new barriers to imports — unless they were applied to other steel exporters. And applying trade barriers to those other countries makes no sense, in national security terms, because most of them are at worst not hostile to the United States and in many cases are close U.S. allies. In fact, of the top 10 foreign steel suppliers, of which Canada is the largest, six are tied to the United States through NATO, NAFTA or bilateral defense treaties; two others, Taiwan and Brazil, are old U.S. friends.