G20 members struggle for agreements ahead of Argentina summit

People talk to members of Argentina's National Gendarmerie in a secured area, ahead of the Group 20 summit, in Buenos Aires, Argentina November - Reuters

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters): G20 member nations were still struggling to reach agreement on major issues including trade, migration and climate change as world leaders began arriving in the Argentine capital ahead of a summit on Friday.

“This is not a good year for multilateralism,” said a German government source about talks on a final statement that the leaders are due to issue at the end of their meeting on Saturday. The negotiations are “very, very difficult,” the official told Reuters.

The official offered no details on the points of dispute, but global trade tensions, fuelled by President Donald Trump’s launch of a trade war against China, are expected to dominate this year’s gathering of the Group of 20, an unwieldy club of the world’s industrialised countries.

Trump’s scepticism that global warming is caused by human activity also raised questions about what the statement will say on the issue.

This year’s G20 gathering is expected to be one of the most consequential summits since the group’s leaders first met in 2008 to plan how to contain the economic crisis.

Financial and commodities markets are closely watching the outcome of the summit, especially the planned meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday.

A slowdown in the global economy will worsen if Trump presses ahead with plans to further increase tariffs on some $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25%, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria told Reuters.

Gurria said the impact of existing US trade tariffs of 10% on Chinese goods amounted to a loss of 0.2% of global gross domestic product by 2020.

“If you jack the tariffs up to 25% and then others retaliate, the impact could go all the way up to almost 1%,” he said.

Argentina, this year’s G20 president, has stressed the importance of the summit as a consensus-building forum.