Leaders of the G7 nations met for their annual summit June 15-17 in the Canadian province of Alberta. U.S. President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum were among the world leaders attending the summit, alongside the gathering’s host, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. What did world leaders accomplish at the summit, and how much progress did they make on areas including geopolitics and trade? What did meetings on the summit’s sidelines say about the dynamics between the leaders in attendance?
Carlo Dade, director of international policy at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy: “The big story for Latin America and the Caribbean was not the big story globally, that is, the absence of damage caused by U.S. President Trump. Success was always going to be about having less. That also holds for what may be most consequential for the region: the reappearance of a serious Canada that shows up without the baggage of its recent moralizing, finger-wagging and larding of international economic agendas with virtue signaling on social issues. This is the Canada that nations of the hemisphere may distantly remember from a time when Canada mattered to the region, when it played a useful and helpful role centered on truly shared interests of importance. That an eroding economy at home and turmoil abroad have sharpened minds in the new government in Ottawa was on display in a part of Canada that had little, if any, tolerance for the previous government’s agenda. The evidence for this is scant, but in Western Canada, we take what we can get. Significant in Canada was the invitation to Prime Minister Modi of India, whose government has been implicated by U.S. federal law enforcement of ordering the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil, and the invitation to Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. That there was little to no protest of significance from Canadian political parties or civil society, as the prime minister clearly read the room at Kananaskis instead of reading the polls at home, is another positive signal. These signals match those given by the new government on domestic economic reform, where the focus, so far, has been actually building infrastructure, something the country has been largely unable to do for decades and carrying out politically difficult regulatory reforms. For the region, the end of finger wagging and virtue signaling may be reason enough to consider re-engaging Canada; the addition of a seriousness about economic growth makes an even stronger case. More than a communique about wildfires, a return to the pragmatic, practical and, above all, serious Canada of the past will be what matters most to the region.”
Andrés Rozental, member of the Advisor board, president of Rozental & Asociados and former deputy foreign minister of Mexico: “The conflict between Israel and Iran ended up pushing President Trump to leave the summit a day early and to cancel at least two important bilateral meetings that were scheduled with Mexico’s President Sheinbaum and Ukraine’s Zelensky. His abrupt decision to return to Washington, together with his first refusal to sign on to a joint statement drafted by the rest of the G7 countries, were reminders of what happened at the last G7 summit held in Canada during his first term when he angrily stormed out of the meeting, spewing invectives at then-Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and downplaying the importance of the G7 in general. While this time Trump showed a nicer face during the initial media coverage of his meetings with Mark Carney and Keir Starmer, his irate statements about the group having expelled Russia after that country’s invasion of Crimea, as well as restating his opinion that the G7 wasn’t useful without Putin at the table, indicates that he doesn’t really give much importance to multilateral discussions within the group. Although the U.S. president was able to cloak his decision to leave early by saying that the crisis in the Middle East was much more important than staying on for the second day of the summit, with the advanced communications facilities that always accompany a U.S. president, he could well have presided remotely over a situation room meeting of his cabinet and taken the same decisions that he approved after returning to Washington. In any case, little was accomplished at Kananaskis beyond the announcements regarding the bilateral ‘deal’ with the United Kingdom (already publicized back in May) and a commitment to negotiate an economic agreement with Canada in the next few months. The joint text agreed to by the other G7 members that Trump earlier refused to join was later slightly amended to allow for him to belatedly sign on, but the substance was nothing more than a reiterated call for a de-escalation of hostilities between Israel and Iran.”
Roberta Lajous, former Mexican ambassador to Cuba, Bolivia and Spain: “From the Mexican perspective, the most important result of the G7 meeting in Canada was the telephone call between President Sheinbaum and President Trump agreeing to negotiate a ‘global’ deal including security, migration and trade. Just the week before, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Sheinbaum of encouraging protests in Los Angeles, from the Oval Office in Trump’s presence. Although Sheinbaum immediately denied the accusation, saying she had spoken about peaceful mobilization regarding the tax on remittances, it was the lowest point of bilateral relations in this century. As the G7 meeting was developing, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau made public the encouraging result of his meeting with Sheinbaum at the National Palace, which took place a week before. He reported being encouraged by the start of a new era of cooperation between the United States and Mexico in security matters ‘as never before.’ He announced a visit of Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Mexico City, on a date to be determined. Mexican wisdom, learned from 200 years of trying to gravitate intelligently around our powerful neighbor, says that Washington has a binary understanding of foreign leaders: friendly or unfriendly. The proof is in the pudding. More cooperation around security issues is required for improving friendly bilateral relations. While Mexico and the United States work on that, Sheinbaum hopefully learned from her first meeting with Prime Minister Carney about the trade and security agreement that Canada is working on with the United States, which was surely worth the trip to Kananaskis.”
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