In any ordinary year, the annual G7 summit would be in full swing this week. This is no ordinary year, of course. And with U.S. President Donald Trump hosting this year’s gathering, the summit already has abandoned its usual veneer of unity.
In any ordinary year, the annual G7 summit would be in full swing this week, with leaders from that select group of industrialized nations conferring collegially on the biggest challenges facing the world and what they intend to do about them.
This is no ordinary year, of course. And with U.S. President Donald Trump hosting this year’s gathering, the summit already has abandoned its usual veneer of unity.
Trump’s decision to invite Russia’s Vladimir Putin prompted an immediate backlash from the U.K. and Canada. Germany’s Angela Merkel said she wouldn’t attend the meeting unless it was put off due to the pandemic. The member nations’ focus on China — and Trump’s public musings about how he thinks the G7 has outlived its usefulness — suggest there’s little reason for the other leaders to travel to the presidential retreat in Maryland.
Start with the timing. Trump has been talking about holding the summit in September — just weeks before the November U.S. presidential election. That would give him an opportunity to burnish his image with the American electorate in any way he sees fit.
The summit as campaign prop
Then there’s the agenda. The “let’s-take-on-China” drive dovetails nicely with what most political experts believe will be a key message of Trump’s re-election bid — but it leaves Canada in a particularly vulnerable spot, given the ongoing extradition process for Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
The president (never a fan of G7 summits or any other multilateral gatherings) is looking to mix things up while offering his own version of why the meeting is being delayed — one that has nothing to do with the pandemic.
“I’m postponing it because I don’t feel as a G7 it probably represents what’s going on in the world,” the president told reporters 10 days ago. “It’s a very outdated group of countries.”
Trump has invited the leaders of India, Australia, South Korea. No issues there.
But extending an invitation to Russia, which was expelled in 2014 for annexing Crimea, went over badly.
“Russia was excluded from the G7 after it invaded Crimea a number of years ago, and its continued disrespect and flaunting of international rules and norms is why it remains outside of the G7 and it will continue to remain out,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at one of his regula