YOUR PURPOSE IS YOUR BIGGEST ASSET

But compared with previous summits during Donald Trump’s presidency, the meeting expressed a sense of productive optimism and reciprocal trust between leaders. It was indeed the first foreign trip by the new man in the White House, Joe Biden, who used the event as a platform to relaunch Us-led multilateralism.

In the closing press conference, President Biden said that the leaders will be judged on their willingness to curb the international influence of autocrats, sniping at China’s Road and Belt initiative. But French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to point out that the G7 is not an anti-china club, insisting on pursuing a productive relationship with Beijing on core issues such as environmental policy and human rights.

The meeting also had a bearing on the European project and reframed the relationship between the US, Canada, Britain, Japan, France, Italy, and Germany as an assembly of democratic nations with a global attitude.

Time will tell whether the event will have any impact on other countries, but Beijing lost no time in dismissing the G7 as a small club that wants to dictate world affairs. That may have been just the quality of endorsement that the summit leaders were looking for.