Group of Seven nations won’t try to reach consensus on a joint communique at next week’s leaders summit in Canada, people familiar with the matter said, an acknowledgment of the wide gulf that separates the US from the other members on Ukraine, climate change and other issues.
In place of a single document, G-7 leaders are likely to release standalone joint leaders’ statements on various topics, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.
That approach is the preference of the Canadian hosts, they said. Prime Minister Mark Carney is looking to ease tensions with the US president and push forward with talks about trade and security.
Agreeing on a final communique is usually a ritual for leaders gathered at meetings like the G-7 summit. While the document has no legal authority, it amounts to a statement of principles and is intended to display unity among the participants on topics of global importance.
The communique from last year’s summit, for example, was 36 pages long and included pledges to support Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, tackle climate change and foster gender equality.
But Trump has upended US policy on all those issues and many more, declining to voice support for Ukraine over Russia, scrapping climate-change initiatives and dismissing gender initiatives as part of a “woke” agenda by Democrats.
Carney wants to avoid a repeat of 2018, the last time Canada hosted the Group of Seven leaders, when Trump pulled out of the joint communique hours after signing it because he was annoyed by comments made to reporters by then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
In addition to trade, the leaders of the group of wealthy economies — the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada — are set to discuss artificial intelligence, energy security, wildfires and global conflicts, including in Ukraine and the Middle East. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will join the summit, along with the leaders of India, Brazil, Mexico and others.
Following the 2018 meeting, final documents tended to be shorter so that they were less time-consuming to negotiate but also included less text that members could disagree with, said Caitlin Welsh, who served in Trump’s first administration.
“Moving forward to this year’s G-7 summit, today the Trump administration almost certainly believes that no deal is better than a bad deal, and it continues to prefer a back-to-basics approach to the G-7,” Welsh said at a briefing held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The Trump administration last time around believed that the G-7 had strayed from its original purpose, which was to promote global economic stability and growth,” she said, adding that Carney’s agenda “appears to stick to traditional G-7 principles.”
With assistance from Nick Wadhams.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
