“Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or enemies, take advantage of us on Trade anymore,” the president said in a tweet. “We must put the American worker first!”

Mr. Trump’s harsh words about the nation’s closest allies stood in stark contrast to his expression of sunny feelings toward Mr. Kim, a brutal dictator who is known for human rights abuses and who ordered the execution of his own uncle.

“Great to be in Singapore, excitement in the air!” tweeted Mr. Trump, before setting foot outside his hotel.

To negotiate the terms of the joint statement, the administration recruited Sung Y. Kim, a seasoned North Korea negotiator now serving as American ambassador to the Philippines, to lead that effort. Ambassador Kim and a small group of diplomats held a series of talks last week with the North Koreans in Panmunjom, the so-called truce village in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

People briefed on the meetings said American negotiators had found it difficult to make significant headway with the North Koreans, in part because the White House did not back them up in taking a hard line.

In his public statements before the talks, Mr. Trump showed gradually greater flexibility toward North Korea, saying he viewed its disarmament as a “process,” rather than something to be done all at once, and disavowing the phrase “maximum pressure,” after making it the centerpiece of his policy.

But Mr. Trump also included his national security adviser, John R. Bolton, in the meeting with Mr. Kim. Mr. Bolton is a lightning rod in Pyongyang because of his proposal that North Korea disarm voluntarily as Libya did in 2003 — a concession that ended badly, when Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, was killed by his own people in an uprising less than a decade later in the wake of a NATO air campaign.

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