Trump casts shadow over G20

Washington is now the biggest source of discord in global forums.

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The club of finance ministers and central bankers who've steered the global economy through a quarter century of market meltdowns, recessions, wars and the pandemic meet this week facing new headwinds to their goal of broader prosperity - tariffs and the imminent threat of trade wars.

Long an opponent of instability and uncertainty in forums like the Group of 20, Washington is now the biggest source of disruption and discord given President Donald Trump's 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports and threats of even higher import taxes on main trading partners Mexico, Canada and the European Union.

G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs were to convene in Cape Town yesterday and today amid Trump's assault on the multilateral world order.

The US pullback is clear: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is skipping the meeting, following Secretary of State Marco Rubio's absence in Johannesburg last week at a gathering of G20 foreign ministers.

This week's summit comes just days after Trump deepened US diplomatic tensions with European allies by voting along with Russia against a UN General Assembly resolution that called out Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.