Kananaskis (Canada) (AFP) – World leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Canada on Monday pushed US President Donald Trump to back away from his punishing trade war, arguing that it poses a risk to global economic stability. At a summit where host Canada worked to avoid stoking Trump’s anger, and with attention on events in the Middle East, leaders still urged the US president to reverse course on his plans to impose even steeper tariffs on countries across the globe as early as next month. Most countries represented at the G7 are already subject to a 10 percent baseline tariff imposed by Trump, with European countries and Japan also hit with additional levies on cars, steel, and aluminum.
G7 leaders used the meeting to sit down with Trump one-on-one to make their case for the US leader to seal agreements that would eliminate the worst of the US tariff threat. In official sessions, the leaders also warned Trump that the tariffs could bring serious harm to the world economy. “Several participants asked to end the tariff dispute as soon as possible,” a senior German official told reporters on condition of anonymity. They argued that the dispute weakens the G7’s economies and “in the end will only strengthen China,” the official said.
Trump used the meeting to officially sign a deal already announced in May with Britain, the first country to secure a trade pact with the US to avoid Trump’s threat of the crushing levies. “I like them. That’s the ultimate protection,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the G7 sidelines. At a media conference marking the deal, Trump opened a folder to display the signed agreement, only for the paperwork to slide out and spread across the ground. “Oops, sorry about that,” he said as Starmer scrambled to gather up the loose sheets and stuff them back in the folder.
The trade issue is of urgent interest to Canada after the Trump administration announced several additional levies on Canadian imports in recent months, throwing the economic future of America’s northern neighbor into deep uncertainty. After a meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Canadian government indicated that the two sides could reach a trade truce deal within the next 30 days. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters in Canada that he spoke to Trump for 30 minutes and discussed ways they could find a solution “in a manner that is in line with Japan’s national interests,” according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. “As there are still some points where both sides disagree, we have not reached an agreement on the package as a whole,” Ishiba said.
There were hopes that non-G7 countries expected at the meeting on Tuesday would also have their time with Trump, but this was dashed by the US leader’s decision to cut his attendance short due to the Iran crisis. Leaders from South Korea, India, Brazil, and South Africa will arrive at the gathering at a resort in the Canadian Rockies with Trump already gone. Dozens of countries are locked in negotiations with Washington to clinch some sort of trade deal before the US imposes stinging reciprocal tariffs, threatened for July 9. Mexico, whose president Claudia Sheinbaum was also expected, is meanwhile seeking to renegotiate its three-way North American free trade agreement that also includes Canada.
While there was little expectation that the summit would deliver a breakthrough in the trade negotiations between the US and the rest of the world, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was part of Trump’s delegation. A source at the summit said that French President Emmanuel Macron urged the American leader to quickly end the trade conflict once and for all. The European Commission handles trade negotiations for the 27-country bloc, and the EU’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic was also attending the summit, accompanying the delegation of EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
The EU institutions are official members of the G7, and during the morning session, von der Leyen argued to the leaders that “tariffs — no matter who sets them — are ultimately a tax paid by consumers and businesses at home.” Von der Leyen also met with Trump one-on-one on trade issues in a sit-down that US officials said was at her request. “We instructed the teams to accelerate their work to strike a good and fair deal. Let’s get it done,” she said in a post on X.
© 2024 AFP
