TEHRAN, November 30 - 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 starting on Friday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - "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, fueled 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 industrialized countries.
Trump's skepticism 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 percent, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria told Reuters.
Gurria said the impact of existing U.S. trade tariffs of 10 percent on Chinese goods amounted to a loss of 0.2 percent of global gross domestic product by 2020.
"If you jack the tariffs up to 25 percent and then others retaliate, the impact could go all the way up to almost 1 percent," he said.
Argentina, this year's G20 president, has stressed the importance of the summit as a consensus-building forum. But the divisions have only highlighted how fractured the grouping has become on key global issues.
Source: Reuters
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