PREVIEW
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s G20 agenda was boosted by agreeing a consensus communique at Finance Ministers meeting in Durban on 18 July
The text itself is low on substance: its references to the importance of multilateral cooperation, the World Trade Organization and ‘rules based’ trade are hardly radical. Nor are the commitments to strengthen the G20 Common Framework on debt.
But getting agreement on any text in the absence of the United States, whose Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent boycotted the meeting for a second time, underlining the pariah status which the Trump administration has given to Cyril Ramaphosa’s government, must count as a significant success (Dispatches 18/2/25, Brussels offers hand of friendship & AC Vol 66 No 7, Pretoria picks new envoy for the MAGA minefield).
Pretoria’s hopes of using its G20 presidency – the first time an African nation has held it – to promote an African agenda by focusing on the high cost of capital and debt servicing, as well as funding for climate change action, has been somewhat derailed by the Trump administration’s refusal to engage in the process (AC Vol 66 No 4, Ramaphosa’s G20 and growth plans sideline Trump threats over funding). Even so, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says that progress has been made in the wider G20 group on issues such as debt restructuring for poorer African countries, and infrastructure funding. That was reflected in the Durban communiqué, though references to climate change were not included.
The organisation itself also faces something of an existential crisis. Most of the G20 are facing the potential costs of Trump’s tariff war and wider ambivalence towards multilateralism, and its own frequent diplomatic run-ins with the US. But Ramaphosa is due to hand over the G20 presidency to Trump on behalf of the US in November.
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