Group of Seven finance ministers ended their annual meeting with US allies united in condemning Washington\u2019s aggressive protectionism, calling on President Donald Trump to reverse his decision to impose punishing metal tariffs.<\/p>\n
The lack of common ground meant the dispute would continue into next week\u2019s G7 summit in Quebec, Canada, where Trump is expected to face other heads of state as the global economy verges on outright trade conflict. At this snow-capped mountain resort north of Vancouver, British Columbia, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was the odd man out. Major trading partners rebuked Trump\u2019s multi-front trade offensive while their governments announced countermeasures and legal challenges.<\/p>\n
One after another, finance ministers and central bankers spoke of exasperation and an abiding sense of betrayal by a longtime ally. Mnuchin, however, downplayed the disagreements and said the United States was committed to the G7 process.<\/p>\n
Announcing the meeting\u2019s close, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau said the host government and five others had urged Mnuchin to relay their \u201cunanimous concern and disappointment.\u201d \u201cWe said that we were collectively hoping that he would bring the message back of regret and disappointment at the American actions and concern that they are not constructive,\u201d said Morneau.<\/p>\n
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also expressed France\u2019s outrage as the meetings ended. \u201cI want to make it clear,\u201d Le Maire said, \u201cthat it is up to the US administration to make the right decisions to alleviate the situation and ease the difficulties.\u201d Avoiding trade war \u201cwill depend on the decision the (US) administration is ready to take in the next few days and in the next few hours \u2014 I\u2019m not talking about weeks ahead,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told reporters the US tariffs were \u201ca very severe problem\u201d for transatlantic relations. \u201cNo one understands that due to security reasons there should be extra tariffs on steel and aluminum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s tariffs on America\u2019s largest foreign providers of the crucial metals that went into effect Friday upended the agenda for this normally convivial event for consensus-building among countries that account for about half of global GDP. No joint final statement emerged from the G7 ministerial meeting, a sign of the strong discord now at the heart of the global economy. How the White House would deal with this remained unclear.<\/p>\n
As the ministers\u2019 meet ended, Trump was as bellicose as ever, taking to Twitter to denounce \u201cstupid trade\u201d in which he said the US saw foreign tariffs on its exports without responding in kind. \u201cWhen you\u2019re almost 800 Billion Dollars a year down on Trade, you can\u2019t lose a Trade War! The US has been ripped off by other countries for years on Trade, time to get smart!\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Counting trade in both goods and services, the US trade deficit was $566 billion in 2017, a 12 percent increase marking its highest level since the 2008 Great Recession. Chairing a meeting on Friday, Morneau allowed participants to register grievances with Mnuchin one at a time, according to a Canadian source. Behind closed doors, sources briefed on the talks said Mnuchin listened but spoke little, saying instead the discussion could continue at next week\u2019s G7 summit in the French-speaking province of Quebec at which Trump is expected to participate.<\/p>\n
Mnuchin said he had informed Trump of his discussions but that trade was only one of many issues on a full agenda. \u201cThese are our most important allies or some of our most important allies. We\u2019ve had long-standing relationships with all these countries that are very important across all different aspects,\u201d Mnuchin told reporters. \u201cI believe there was a comment out there that this was the G6 plus one. It was not. This was the G7. We believe in the G7.\u201d The week\u2019s whirlwind global developments in trade suggested a quick de-escalation was unlikely.<\/p>\n
Trump has suggested the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement might be scrapped in favor of seeking bilateral agreements with Canada and Mexico. G7 governments were also digesting Trump\u2019s threats to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in US auto imports on purported national security grounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Group of Seven finance ministers ended their annual meeting with US allies united in condemning Washington\u2019s aggressive protectionism, calling on President Donald Trump to reverse his decision to impose punishing metal tariffs. The lack of common ground meant the dispute would continue into next week\u2019s G7 summit in Quebec, Canada, where Trump is expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33027,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33025\/revisions\/33027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}