Trump plans to reform ‘very outdated’ G7 membership
Daily Telegraph Reporter DONALD TRUMP has said he is going to postpone this year’s G7 summit until at least September, expand the list of invitees to include Australia, South Korea and India – and bring back Russia.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One during his return to Washington from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the US president said the G7 group of the world’s most advanced economies was a “very outdated group of countries” in its current format.
He said: “I’m postponing it because I don’t feel that as a G7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world.” The European members offered no immediate comment, with a spokesman for the German government saying it was “waiting for further information”.
It was unclear if Mr Trump’s desire to invite the additional countries was intended to permanently expand the G7. He has suggested several times that Russia should return, given what he called its global strategic importance. Russia’s membership was suspended in 2014, when it annexed Crimea.
Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesman, said Mr Trump wanted the countries to discuss China at the expanded summit. He had criticised Beijing over its handling of the pandemic and on Friday ordered his administration to begin the process of ending special US treatment for Hong Kong in retaliation for China’s decision
‘I don’t feel that as a G7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world’
to impose a new security law on the former British colony.
The decision to postpone the G7 summit is seen in some quarters as a retreat for Mr Trump, who had sought to host the meeting in Washington as a demonstration that the US was returning to normal after the coronavirus epidemic, which has killed more than 103,000 Americans to date.
Mr Trump had cancelled an in-person G7 meeting scheduled for March as the virus spread, but had recently sought to revive it.