Reference Message Network reported on June 23 that the website of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK published an article titled "It's Time to Rethink the G7" on June 18. The author is Kiron Skinner, director of the institute's Global Economy and Finance Program. The full text is excerpted as follows:

President Trump's decision to leave the G7 Summit early in Charlevoix, Canada, was not unprecedented. However, his early departure had consequences, as he missed the opportunity to discuss important issues such as aid to Ukraine with President Zelenskyy. He also missed the meeting with leaders of "invited countries" including Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea on energy security.

Trump's departure also reflects the deeper challenges facing the role of the G7 and the need for other member countries to rethink how they should deal with this president.

When the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out in February 2022, the cohesion of the G7 reached its peak. However, since the beginning of Trump's second term, the group clearly struggled to continue operating in the previous manner.

Trump's early statements and actions fundamentally undermined the trust required for the operation of the G7. He also repeatedly threatened the sovereignty of G7 members Canada and the EU and undermined NATO's security guarantee.

His tariff policies hit close allies of the G7 as severely as other countries. Senior officials in his administration once supported far-right political parties opposing G7 leaders. Trump also withdrew U.S. support for global poverty reduction efforts and responses to survival threats such as climate change and infectious diseases.

In such a challenging context, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney designed the agenda of the summit to cater to sensitive points in the United States while attempting to address at least some major global issues.

Carney focused the key issues of the summit on areas where he hoped to reach consensus with the U.S., such as combating transnational crime, strengthening critical material supply chains, promoting growth through artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and encouraging private investment in infrastructure, avoiding trade, climate change, global health threats, and poverty.

Canada also indicated that the summit would not issue a comprehensive communiqué but would only release individual statements on specific topics. This could avoid the risk of Trump refusing to endorse the entire communiqué as he did during the G7 Summit in Charlevoix in 2018.

The "brief statement" model, by focusing only on new topics and avoiding restating all unresolved positions, can also avoid touching on issues where the U.S. president has not yet made a clear stance (such as the role of the International Monetary Fund) or陷入 difficult negotiations over divisive texts (such as climate change issues).

Leaders of the "G6" likely expressed concerns to Trump about his tariff policies and the potential threat of further U.S. fiscal easing plans to global prosperity. However, this neither led to any public consensus nor presumably changed the president's perspective.

Some believe that the "G6" leaders avoided significant public conflicts at the summit to preserve space for optimal outcomes at the NATO Summit from June 24 to 25.

Nevertheless, the ultimate result of all these efforts—and the approximately $300 million borne by Canadian taxpayers—will inevitably disappoint the host country and all other participating nations except the United States.

The next G7 Summit will be held in France in 2026. It can be determined that macroeconomic stability and growth, climate change and energy transition, global health threats, industrial strategy and economic security, development financing and poverty alleviation, etc., will become the economic topics of the next summit.

France can follow Canada's approach by determining on which issues the U.S. is sufficiently open to reaching consensus, while completely excluding other issues (regardless of their importance) from the agenda or limiting them to closed-door discussions.

However, as Canada has just experienced, there is a risk: compared to current global challenges, the results of the summit may seem insignificant, and Trump will not participate in topics that do not interest him or where there are fundamental differences with partners.

Another option is to hold a completely independent "G6+" leaders' meeting outside the G7 process, with the "G6" advancing an independent agenda. However, this would increase organizational and time costs and possibly render the G7 Summit itself irrelevant.

But there is a third option: preparing a complete "G7+" agenda, with most of the summit time involving participation from "G6" economies and other major developed economies and emerging market partners such as Australia and South Korea, while the U.S. president would actually be invited as a "guest" to participate in limited topics he wishes to join.

This can maintain the significance of the G7's existence, prevent the U.S. from having substantive veto power in discussions and responses to major global issues, and eliminate the risk of disrupting the entire agenda due to the U.S. president's last-minute decision not to attend or leaving early.

Original Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7519054268494610994/

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