Trump postpones 'outdated' G-7, wants to bring Russia back into an expanded field

(Image credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

published 31 May 2020

President Trump isn't considered a big fan of multilateral diplomacy, and he's often willing to set a separate course for the United States and operate outside the traditional international system. But, when it comes to the Group of Seven, the U.S. president actually want to expand the talks to include several other countries.

Trump on Saturday postponed the G-7 summit, which he had hoped to host in Washington, D.C., at the end of June, until at least September. Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to commit to attending over concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, but Trump didn't indicate their potential absences were the primary reasons for his decision.

Instead, Trump said he believes the current group of countries — the U.S., Germany, Canada, Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy — is "outdated" and doesn't represent "what's going on in the world." He said he plans to extend invitations to Australia, South Korea, India, and Russia. The latter will likely prove the most controversial; Russia was expelled from what was then the Group of Eight in 2014 over Moscow's annexation of Crimea, and other G-7 leaders have continually rejected Trump's efforts to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin back into the fold.

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Per Reuters, it seems one of the factors motivating Trump to expand the invite list is so the countries can discuss China, which he's grown increasingly critical of in the wake of the pandemic and its efforts to curtail Hong Kong's autonomy. Read more at CNN and Reuters.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.