Clashes on trade, climate at G7 meet
Leaders from the world’s major industrialised nations began talks on Friday at a G7 summit in Sicily, exposing deep divisions with US President Donald Trump over trade and climate change.
After receiving warm receptions in Saudia Arabia and Israel, Trump’s confrontational stance with long-standing partners in Europe cast a cloud over the meeting in Taormina, where leaders are due to discuss terrorism, Syria, North Korea and the global economy.
“No doubt, this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” Donald Tusk, who chairs summits of European Union leaders, said before the meeting.
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn predicted “robust” discussions on trade and climate.
European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, hoped to use the summit to convince Trump to soften some of his stances.
Trump, who dismissed human-made global warming as a “hoax” during his election campaign, is threatening to pull the US out of a 2015 climate deal clinched in Paris in 2015. Fellow G7 leaders are trying to convince him to stay in. Cohn and other officials said Trump will wait until after the summit to decide.
In a meeting with European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker, Trump denounced the German trade surplus as “very bad” and complained about the large number of German cars being sold in the United States, officials said.
Juncker tried to play down the comments ahead of the summit. But they underscored ongoing policy divisions between Trump and his partners four months after he took office.