Donald Trump's third G7: from bad to worse

• G7.The Iranian Foreign Minister arrives by surprise at Biarritz in the heat of debate over the nuclear crisis
• Summit: The controversy over Brexit, the only cloud at the start of the G7

If Donald Trump depended, the G7 would have ceased to exist. If NATO, the EU and the WTO were considered obsolete, fundamental pillars of Western security and world trade, what interest can an informal group of allies see who treats the same or worse than their adversaries?

Can you expect something sensible from a president who, last Friday, after threatening to raise tariffs on $ 250,000 million in Chinese products and 30% on levies on another 300,000 million, said the president he elected to lead the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell , is worse enemy than the Chinese president, Xi Jinping?

Although he has not missed any of the three summits held since his election in 2016, he has never recognized the valuable contribution of the G7 since the Secretary of the US Treasury, George Shultz , convened in 1973 the ministers of Finance and central bankers of Japan, England, France and Germany in the White House library to coordinate an effective response to the monetary crisis following the abandonment of the gold standard and the oil embargo by OPEC after the 1973 war.

With the UN blocked, since 45 years ago Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt left the Finance portfolios, respectively, by the Presidency of France and the Chancellery of the RFA, that group - extended to Italy, Canada and the EU - between 1975 and 1977 became the main engine of initiatives to overcome periodic oil crises, major trade imbalances, the worst debt crises and the most serious international threats.

In the 5.4 documents and 10,183 words on average that the G7 has approved each year since its birth (in Canada last year the figure rose to 9 texts and 11,224 words) we find recommendations and action commitments regarding the main challenges of the last medium century.

The degree of compliance depends on the source consulted. According to the Research Group of the G7 itself responsible for the evaluation, of the 34 main anti-terrorism commitments approved between 1978 and 2017, 75% have been fulfilled. Hard to believe that global compliance is between 75% and 90% when the Amazon, for example, has been on the agenda since 1990 and continues to destroy between 400 and 800 square kilometers per month.

From macroeconomics, personal relations between leaders were soon passed to security and every year, a decisive factor when there is no institutional structure, and the immediate (this year the tariff war, the digital rate, Kashmir, Brexit, Iran, Venezuela, Ebola in the Congo or the fires in the Amazon) overshadow the results achieved with such effort in the ministries (seven this year) and in the working groups.

The most important of Biarritz, presented on Friday at the Elysee, is the Report for Equality, with 79 recommendations in four areas (violence, economic autonomy, education / health and discrimination) with the hope that they will become laws where more The status of some 2.5 billion women (one in every three inhabitants of the planet) who still live under discriminatory laws, without legal protection, is needed and can be improved.

With the help of the G7, which never passed from group to organization or issued communiqués during the first ten years , the Western powers successfully surpassed the end of the Cold War and, in the 1990s, concluded the Uruguay round and established the World Organization of Commerce. Without its momentum, democracy, now in clear retreat, would not have spread as it did between 1990 and 2005.

Aware of their loss of representation - from 70% to 40% of world GDP and with only 10% of the planet's population -, in 1997-98 they admitted to the group a Russia still far from democracy and, in the face of the crisis of the Asian debt of the late 90s, they promoted another group (today called G-20, with 85% of GDP and 2/3 of the world population), which was so useful to manage the 2007-2008 crisis.

Once the crisis has been overcome, they ignored the profound imbalances of globalization, refused to reform the main institutions of the Cold War , starting with the Security Council, and blocked the adaptation of global governance to the new balance of power promoted by the emerging powers, especially China. The absence of China, Russia and Brazil at the Biarritz summit, not even as guests, is good proof of that.

"Too many darts," acknowledged one of the main sherpas after Saturday's inaugural dinner. "It was not a pleasant dinner." Trump is still determined to invite Vladimir Putin to the 2020 summit in the US, possibly in Florida. The European Council prefers at the table the new president of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelensky .

With his lunch alone with Trump and the resignation of a final statement, Macron has tried to avoid another fright of the great American disruptor like last year in Canada, but until the end we will not know the result.

The US Administration does not share the top priorities of France at this summit - to maintain multilateralism, defend democracy and embry globalization so that it benefits the majority - nor its concrete proposals on equality between men and women, a fair tax on digital dinosaurs , a new world trade regime, a firmer defense of the environment and commitments that facilitate relaxation in the main regional conflicts: Korean peninsula, cyber attacks, Iran, Venezuela, Kashmir, Ukraine ...

Trump is not alone in his opinion that French President Emmanuel Macron has ridden a G7 thinking more about the interests of France and his own prestige than in solving the most urgent problems. How, if not, to explain that only one Asian country (India) and one from Latin America (Chile) were invited in front of seven Africans?

Canada got 7,000 million dollars (6,300 million euros) - more than expected - for the financing of the programs approved in 2018. The success or failure of the first G7 organized by Macron will depend largely on the fact that it exceeds that amount despite of the waning budgets in most of the members and of the growing concern about another recession. What less if the official cost of the party has been about 34 million.

Felipe Sahagún is Professor of International Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid and member of the Editorial Board of EL MUNDO

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• France
• Canada
• Iran
• Ukraine
• Venezuela
• Russia
• China
• GDP
• Vladimir Putin
• Federal Reserve
• NATO
• Un
• Germany
• Brazil
• Chile
• European Council
• Donald Trump
• Emmanuel Macron
• Italy
• Japan

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