G20 defies Trump as leaders press on without the US

As he brought the gavel down on a G20 summit with a tongue-in-cheek dig at the United States, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa struck a defiant note towards the isolationist stance of President Donald Trump and his self-imposed exile from multilateral bodies Washington once championed.

The joint agreement by the 19 remaining countries, after Trump boycotted the meeting and told other countries not to sign a communiqué, “reaffirms our renewed commitment to multilateral co-operation”, a beaming Ramaphosa said on Sunday.

The 30-page Johannesburg declaration called for increased funding for renewable energy projects, more equitable critical mineral supply chains and debt relief for poorer countries, among other issues.

“We shall see each other again next year [in the US]” said Ramaphosa, who had refused a last-minute US request to send a diplomat to accept the formal handing over of the G20 presidency, which the US assumes in December. “Our shared goals outweigh our differences.”

Formed in 1999 as a forum to remedy economic crises, such as trade disputes and financial instability, G20 leaders now also debate wider issues such as climate change and geopolitical tensions.

Trump pulled out of the meeting, saying it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa hosted the event, and repeating false claims that the country is persecuting its white population.

The G20 outcome, coupled with a similar defiance by other countries at the COP30 climate conference, highlighted the extent of America’s strategic withdrawal from groups where it was once the linchpin, and the willingness of others to press ahead regardless.

“While many countries will try to accommodate the US in some respects, there is a line they won’t cross,” said Peter Attard Montalto, the managing director of Johannesburg-based consultancy Krutham. “In particular, the South Africa summit showed they were willing to act against US wishes to protect multilateralism, and that is significant.”

Two days before the G20 began, ‘sherpas’ or officials from the participating nations who were tasked with drafting a joint declaration held an informal huddle to decide whether any form of collective statement was even possible, according to two people briefed on the conversation.

Some argued that Trump’s opposition meant they should give up, but a handful of European delegates argued that to abandon the effort would not just cast a pall over the G20, it would mean the other capitals ceding their sovereignty to Washington.

“There was a sense that we had to send a message ahead of the US presidency,” said one of the people. 

The sentiment reappeared during the summit as European leaders, together with Japan and Canada, met to discuss a response to a US-Russian peace plan for Ukraine, and pushed back against US pressure by calling for “additional work” on the “draft”.

At the COP30 summit in Brazil, which the US also skipped, the EU, UK and others agreed a less ambitious deal than hoped, but salvaged global climate co-operation, despite fears that other countries would follow Trump’s decision to quit the Paris climate agreement for the second time.

“At a time when multilateralism is frankly, under a lot of strain, I think countries have come together and said, actually, we want multilateralism,” said Ed Miliband, the UK energy and climate secretary.

EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said that while it “isn’t always easy” to find consensus, it was “very powerful” to have 194 countries reconfirm their willingness to work together to tackle climate change.

But the US withdrawal from both events has strained the idea of global co-operation.

“Meeting for the first time on the African continent marks an important milestone in the life of the G20. But we must also recognise that the G20 may be reaching the end of a cycle,” French President Emmanuel Macron told journalists at the G20.

At previous G20 summits, the host nation’s leader has handed over to their successor. A photo of current and upcoming presidents is duly taken. With the US absent, Ramaphosa’s team was forced to come up with an alternative.

“I now say that this gavel . . . formally closes this summit and now moves on to the next president of the G20, which is the United States,” he said, smiling as he struck the desk before turning to accept warm hugs from Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

Additional reporting by Rob Rose in Johannesburg