Online Reporter
For the second time this year, the world’s most powerful finance ministers gather in South Africa without the presence of the US Treasury Secretary.
Scott Bessent will skip the Group of 20 again this week, continuing a boycott of South Africa by top US officials begun by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stayed away out of scorn over his hosts’ theme for its G20 presidency of “Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability.”
South Africa is the first nation from the continent to host the G-20. But its ambition to use that to advance issues vital for developing nations is likely to be further sidelined as the club confronts the latest salvo in US President Donald Trump’s trade war.
“The challenge around the G-20 is that you just don’t know what is going to come out of the White House,” said Sanusha Naidu, senior research fellow at the Pretoria-based Institute for Global Dialogue.
“There is an actor in the international system who is playing such a disruptive role for the order of global international governance.”
The preeminent forum for multilateral cooperation has been under attack since Trump returned to the White House, hindering progress on issues including climate change and debt relief that South Africa had hoped to promote.
This meeting, held at the Indian Ocean resort of Zimbali near the port city of Durban on the country’s southeast coast, faces the same fate.
In addition to Trump’s threat of crippling levies on key trading partners from August 1, the US president has aimed at the BRICS bloc of emerging economies, which includes South Africa, threatening an extra 10 percent tariff for “anti-American” policies. — Bloomberg
