The G7 v Donald Trump
6/15/202628 min
The annual G7 summit starts today in France. The normally stuffy, formal affair has been shaken up in recent years by Donald Trump, who has sparred with nearly all of America’s allies. So is the G7 still the powerful, united global force it once was? And with China building its own alliance, how should it respond?
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Guest: Catherine Philp, world affairs editor, The Times.
Host: Luke Jones.
Producers: Micaela Arneson.
We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com
Read more: How the G7 will look by 2050 — and what it means for us
Further listening: Could China become the world's policeman?
Clips: Arirang News, Al Jazeera, BBC News, The Hill, Dawn News English, PBS.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsLuke Jones· Host0:00
[gentle music] From The Times and The Sunday Times, this is The Story. I'm Luke Jones. The G7, the world's richest economies, yes, that still includes us, are gathering in France.
Catherine Philp· Guest0:20
The G7 summits, they're not, um, they're not gonna, uh, win any awards for viewing figures or anything. They're, they, they're usually, they're meant to be quite stiff.
Luke Jones· Host0:28
Catherine Philp is Times' world affairs editor.
Catherine Philp· Guest0:31
They started to get a bit interesting for all the wrong reasons when Donald Trump showed up to them, and I think people will, will remember quite a famous picture of him being confronted by Angela Merkel at the 2018 summit. He later walked out of that summit and refused to sign a final communique, and he did that again last year. So yeah, certainly unexpected, interesting things have started to happen at this very formal event that only really started when Donald Trump came into the picture.
Luke Jones· Host1:01
What used to be a group of broadly like-minded countries joining this declaration or that communique has, in the recent past, turned into open argument.
Speaker 3· Soundbite1:11
President Trump has decided the United States will not sign onto a joint communique from the G7 summit, reversing his earlier endorsement.
Speaker 4· Soundbite1:20
The G7 also tried and failed to get Trump to back down on his opposition to the Paris climate change accord, despite what the German chancellor said were the best