Macron Hopes to Convince Leaders to Halt Trade War And Heal Divisions
At an opening dinner of Basque cuisine in a 19th-century lighthouse, Macron was expected to seek consensus and potentially common action among guests including Tusk and the leaders of the US, UK, Germany, Canada, Japan and Italy.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said he hoped to convince world leaders to pull back from trade war and heal growing divisions at the G7 summit in Biarritz, despite signs that would be a daunting task.
The leaders of the major industrialised democracies gathered in the French Atlantic resort amid global crises, deep rifts within the group and increasingly erratic behaviour by U.S. President Donald Trump.
“There is still no certainty whether the group will be able to find common solutions, and the global challenges are today really serious, or whether it will focus on senseless disputes among each other,” European council president Donald Tusk said in a strikingly dour assessment of the summit’s chances of success.
“The last years have shown that it is increasingly difficult for all of us to find common language when the world needs our co-operation
more, not less.
“This may be the last moment to restore our political community.”
Those difficulties emerged just hours after Mr Trump arrived in France, with US officials accusing the French president of focusing the summit on what they called “niche” issues such as climate change, gender equality and development in Africa. The topics were chosen specifically to appeal to Macron’s domestic audience and supporters, they said, according to multiple U.S. media reports.
At an opening dinner of Basque cuisine in a 19th-century lighthouse, Mr Macron was expected to seek consensus and potentially common action among guests including Tusk and the leaders of the U.S., UK, Germany, Canada, Japan and Italy.
“We are going to talk about the great conflicts: Iran, Syria, Libya and Ukraine,” Macron said.
He was also expected to raise the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the Amazon and the threat of global recession caused by tit-for-tat tariffs leading to full-blown trade wars. Mr Trump has been a common factor in all the crises, on which he is mostly at odds with other leaders. Before leaving for Biarritz, the American president imposed new tariffs on China and invoked a national security law in a threat to force U.S. companies to stop doing business there.
Trump has so far resisted pressure from his fellow leaders to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which he abandoned last year, leading to an accelerating rise in tensions in the Persian Gulf.
And running counter to a European effort to force Jair Bolsonaro to change policies on the Amazon contributing to deforestation and catastrophic wildfires, Mr Trump has embraced the far-right Brazilian leader, sending him an encouraging tweet before leaving Washington. “Our future Trade prospects are very exciting and our relationship is strong, perhaps stronger than ever before,” Mr Trump wrote.