G20 focuses on global trade system

– Many delegates from the world’s 20 largest economies arrived at a summit in Argentina determined to clinch an agreement to reform the global trade system, pushed to a breaking point by tensions between the US and China.

To do so, they had to bow to US and Chinese demands to drop some of the pledges that have become hallmarks of the G20 nations, which represents twothirds of the global population.

Buenos Aires

But they left with a communique committing, for the first time, to reform the dysfunctional World Trade Organisation, the body supposed to regulate global trade disputes.

“A number of words that we used to have always in G7 and G20 summit communiques became kind of taboos,” a European official said on Saturday in the midst of the talks. “We have American taboos and Chinese taboos.”

First among those taboos is “protectionism”. The US administration has become sensitive to criticisms after President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs not only on $250 billion (R3.4 trillion) of Chinese goods but also on steel and aluminum imports that hit several of his G20 partners.

As a result, for the first time since G20 leaders held their inaugural meeting in Washington in 2008, their communique did not contain a pledge to fight protectionism. – Reuters