TIL Desk/World/Washington/ US President Donald Trump jets into Argentina on Thursday for a G20 summit, keen to do battle with China on trade and sharpening his rhetoric against Russia over Ukraine. The weekend summit is confronted with increasingly dire warnings, by the International Monetary Fund among others, of the potential harm faced by the world economy from Trump’s trade wars.
G20 leaders, whose countries account for four-fifths of the world’s economic output, first met in November 2008 to forge a united front against the global financial crisis. A decade on, that unity has vanished as the “America First” Trump shreds the consensus underpinning international trade and other G20 countries such as Brazil, Italy and Mexico turn to populist leaders.
Trump has already rattled global markets by enacting tariffs on the bulk of Chinese imports, and is threatening to go further in January. He will press Chinese President Xi Jinping to avert the stepped-up tariffs by throwing open China’s markets to US competition and protecting foreign companies’ intellectual property. Donald Trump, G20 Summit, Xi Jinping, On Wednesday, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer slammed Beijing for failing to offer “meaningful reform” on aggressive trade policies, and threatened tariffs on Chinese autos.
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