G7 countries accounted for roughly 70 per cent of world GDP in 1976, but now add up to just 45 per cent.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
The summit of the Group of Seven is over, but really it was over long before its official ending. It was over before Donald Trump walked out part way through. If you want to know the truth, it was over before it began.
It was over because the Group of Seven is over, at least in the sense in which it was originally envisaged: as a club of like-minded democracies, large enough and wealthy enough to be able, collectively, to set the global economic agenda.
They’re still large and wealthy, albeit not so much in relative terms: where the G7 countries accounted for roughly 70 per cent of world GDP in 1976, the year Canada joined, they now add up to just 45 per cent. What’s really changed, however, is that they are no longer so like-minded – or, in one case, democratic. What’s changed is that the United States elected Donald Trump. Again.
It was possible, just, to pretend there was still a G7, and not a G6 plus one, during Mr. Trump’s first term, when he was still, barely, reined in by his advisers. Even then it was somewhat farcical, as at the Charlevoix conference in 2018, when Mr. Trump first signed on to the closing communiqué, then unsigned it – via Twitter, naturally – after Justin Trudeau said something that offended him.
Opinion: At the G7, Canada’s globalist ambitions put our domestic problems in stark contrast
But long before this year’s conference, the first since Mr. Trump’s re-election, it was evident how difficult it would be to sustain the pretense. Indeed, it was hard to see how Mr. Trump could even be invited. Never mind that, as a convicted felon, he would ordinarily be legally inadmissible to Canada.
Never mind, too, that he had spent most of the time since his re-election menacing Canada in various ways, from the imposition (and removal, and re-imposition) of a variety of economy-destroying tariffs to his overt and repeated threats to coercively annex the country.
Never mind, last, that he is at this moment attempting, via methods of escalating extremity, to turn the United States into a fascist dictatorship: not normally a ticket into the councils of democratic nations.
What the G7 statements released by world leaders say and don’t say
No, what made this year’s meeting of the G7 utterly absurd was that Mr. Trump shares none of the G7’s declared aims. It is not merely that he disagrees with the consensus on this or that item on the agenda, or that he prefers a different route to a broadly shared aim.
He is fundamentally opposed to everything the G7 stands for, including the G7: the very idea of independent nations attempting to work together for the common good – as opposed to major powers doing whatever they like – is anathema to him.
The rest of the G7 are for liberal trade; Mr. Trump is against trade, or at least imports. They are for macroeconomic stability; Mr. Trump is for deficits without limit. They are for the collective defence of the democracies, and in particular for the defence of Ukraine. Mr. Trump is on the side of Russia, and the autocracies.
U.S. President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One late on Monday as he left the Group of Seven summit in Alberta a day early because of the situation in the Middle East, the White House said.
Reuters
And yet the only thing that the hosts of this year’s G7 – Canada, as it happens – could think to do was to carry on as if nothing had changed. To be sure, it was decided in advance that there would be no closing communiqué, to avert another Charlevoix. But otherwise it was to be the same round of meetings, the same list of agenda items.
Certainly there was good reason for the G6 to meet – mostly to consider how to deal with Mr. Trump. But the presence of Mr. Trump obliged them to genuflect publicly in his direction, as if he were still an ally and not an adversary; to praise him for his “leadership,” even as they were privately plotting how to get around the obstacle he presented to their every ambition. It was as if a football team were to huddle with the other team’s quarterback.
Mr. Trump, for his part, did everything possible to advertise his disdain for the proceedings, and everyone involved. His first act on arriving was to lament that Vladimir Putin was not there, and to suggest that it might be nice in future to include China. He met privately with Prime Minister Mark Carney to discuss those tariffs of his, a meeting so unproductive – Mr. Trump made no commitment to even lower them – that the most it was even claimed to have yielded was an agreement to seek an agreement, which is no agreement at all.
And then he left, ostensibly because he had pressing business to attend to re Iran. More likely he was just bored by the sheer pointlessness of it all. I can’t say I blame him.