Trump Suggests a G7 Expansion to Include Australia, India, and South Korea. Is That Realistic? Will the G-7 see expansion?
https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/tru...alia-india-and-south-korea-is-that-realistic/
This past weekend, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced that the upcoming summit of the Group of Seven would be postponed until September. He added that the meeting would take place around the United Nations General Assembly’s general debate — on either side of the event. What drew considerable attention, however, was Trump’s set of comments suggesting that the G-7 should be expanded. “I don’t feel that as a G-7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world. It’s a very outdated group of countries,” Trump told reporters gathered on Air Force One. Instead, he suggested that other countries, including Russia, South Korea, Australia, and India should be included. The suggestion to add Russia was immediately controversial, given that the Group of Seven was born of the former Group of Eight, which included Russia. The other seven members excluded Moscow from the grouping after its unilateral seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014. But the suggested addition of two U.S. liberaldemocratic treaty allies, Australia and South Korea, and India, an important U.S. partner, have raised eyebrows in these capitals — mostly in a positive way. There’s no real reason this couldn’t happen. The Group of Seven, since Russia’s expulsion, has been a loosely associated group of large, industrialized countries
Comprising the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada (and the European Union), the group meets annually to discuss a range of global issues, managing to usually find a common stance. In recent years, there have been more than a few road bumps. The Trump administration’s “America First” agenda made it difficult for the countries to release the sorts of statements they had in the past, particularly when it came to the issues of climate change and free trade, where the United States is an outlier. The Trump proposal may find takers in the proposed new additions, which would together make the new group a Group of Eleven, or G-11. But there are risks. For instance, even as the United States’ new foreign policy preferences have made joint statements a little more difficult than they were before 2017, the additional of new countries may complicate the agenda in new ways
One of the obvious attractions for Trump of having the four proposed countries at the table is the possibility of having a forum to discuss China. In multilateral terms, adding India and Australia would allow a new G-11 to subsume the “quadrilateral” of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India, providing yet another forum in which these four democracies could interact. But more countries means a broader agenda. India, for instance, may take a different stand from the other participating countries on issues related to trade, where New Delhi continues to be reticent about full-scale liberalization. Either way, the suggestion of adding Russia makes Trump’s proposal a nonstarter for the remaining members of the G-7 — notably the four Europeans and Canada. If the proposal can be disaggregated, Australia, South Korea, and India, however, may have the interest — and ability — to see through a modest expansion. There is also the question of whether an expanded G-7 may lack the sufficient cohesion to justify its existence alongside the Group of 20, which is a broader group of 20 economies — with less in common ideologically — focused on global economic coordination. Given the already-existing rifts within the G-7, an expansion simply might not make sense.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/30/politics/trump-g7-september/index.html
(CNN)
President Donald Trump has announced he is postponing the G7 until at least September and wants to invite four additional countries to the summit: Russia, Australia, India and South Korea.
"I'm postponing it because I don't feel as a G7 it probably represents what's going on in the world. It's a very outdated group of countries," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.
The G7 is comprised of the US, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Japan.
White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah said the President wants to bring other traditional allies, including Five Eyes countries, into the mix, as well as those impacted by coronavirus, and to talk about the future of China.
The President had recently said he planned to host the G7 in person later next month, but has faced a mixed and uncertain response from other G7 leaders on attending the summit in person amid the pandemic.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel "cannot confirm" that she will attend a possible G7 summit in Washington amid the coronavirus pandemic, a spokesperson at the Chancellery said Saturday.
"The Chancellor thanks President Trump for his invitation to the G7 summit in Washington at the end of June," Merkel's spokesperson said in a statement.
"As of today, given the overall pandemic situation, she cannot confirm her personal participation, that is, a trip to Washington," the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, Germany's Health Minister, Jens Spahn, expressed his "disappointment" over the United States'
withdrawal from the World Health Organization, saying that the decision taken by the Trump administration was a "setback" for international health policy.
Other world leaders have also been cagey with regards to Trump's proposed G7 summit.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday he could not yet commit to attending the proposed G7 meeting in person because of concerns over transmission of the virus and Canada's quarantine rules.
"There are significant health preoccupations that we have around holding it in person but there's no question that an in-person meeting in an ideal situation are much more effective than even virtual meetings," he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump on Thursday. The two leaders "agreed on the importance of convening the G7 in person in the near future," according to a White House readout of the call. But the White House did not say whether Macron had committed to attending in person.
Trump first introduced the idea of reviving the summit as an
in-person event in a tweet on May 20, indicating that it would signal to the world that things are returning to normal after the coronavirus pandemic halted travel and froze the global economy.
CNN's Nadine Schmidt, Laura Smith-Spark, Paula Newton, Kevin Liptak and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.