The thirteenth meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20) was held last week Friday and Saturday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the first time that the group has met in South America. For those keeping score, it was the ninth major summit of the year among the leading nations in the world, following, among others, the Summit of the Americas (Peru, April), G7 Summit (Canada, June), Euro Summit (June) and NATO Summit (July), with the latter two being hosted by the city of Brussels in Belgium.
Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in his current capacity as Chairman of Caricom, was a special invitee to the summit where the level of security was at unprecedented heights, as the hosts tried to avoid the heavy protests experienced at last year’s meeting in Hamburg, Germany. A one-time holiday was declared last Friday in Buenos Aires, as twelve square kilometres around the convention centre was closed to the public. Security personnel from attendees, along with 22,000 members of the Argentine Police were deployed to protect the delegates.
In addition to the usual macroeconomic topics, Argentina proposed discussing the future of work including the implications of innovation and automation for education, employment and equality; meeting infrastructure needs, both physical and digital; and the expansion of food security, including through sustainable agricultural development, subjects of great concern to all nations.
Apart from the usual discussions, several events on the sidelines at the summit attracted the attention of observers. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman enjoyed some awkward moments as France’s Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called him out on last October’s brutal killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Trudeau, the only leader to raise the subject during the official sessions, also spoke to bin Salman about Canada’s concerns on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen where millions face starvation. The Canadian leader stated “the need for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid to go Yemen, which is the largest human catastrophe going on in the world right now.”
The Crown Prince was warmly received by the summit’s other outcast Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has been the recipient of bad press following the recent seizure of Ukrainian naval ships and crews by Russia. Putin, of course, stoutly defended his actions by casting blame on Ukraine. US President Donald Trump cancelled a scheduled meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires following the incident.
The highlights away from the sessions was the announcement of a 90-day truce between the USA and China over their current trade battle and the signing of a new NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) agreement between USA, Canada and Mexico, which still has to be ratified by their respective parliaments. In the former instant, America will put on its plan to impose tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, while China has agreed to buy a substantial amount of agricultural, industrial and energy products, in order to reduce America’s trade deficit.
Coming out of the summit, all the G20 leaders have agreed that the World Trade Organisation, the world body which regulates trade disputes, is not working and needs to be examined. The topic will be discussed at the next summit (of course, where else would be better?) in Osaka, Japan in June, 2019. It should be noted, however, that the summit’s communique does not mention the word protectionism, as the USA objected to its use.
Do all these summits achieve anything? Do the poorer and developing nations get any benefits? Or, are these gatherings just all show and rhetoric and agreements to continue discussions at the next summit?
According to Thomas Bernes, a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in this year’s statement, “Leaders buried their differences in obscure language and dropped language to fight protectionism, which had been included in every G-20 communique since the leaders’ first summit. This is clearly a retrograde step forced by US intransigence.”
Another summit began on Monday. The UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties is taking place in Katowice, Poland and will run until the 14th December. The USA, under President Trump’s leadership has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Agreement since global warming is “fake news.” Fortunately, in this instance, the rest of the world has chosen not to let US intransigence interfere with their decision to put plans in place to counter global warming.