Trudeau attends the G20 summit in Brazil. Here’s what’s on the agenda – National
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to leave Peru this morning for the G20 summit in Brazil as Ottawa seeks its position on the issue between the United States and emerging economies.
The Group of 20 is a forum for government agencies and leaders ranging from longtime collaborators like French President Emmanuel Macron to hotshots like Argentine President Javier Milei.
They met in Rio de Janeiro to try to find common ground on issues ranging from solving world hunger to setting rules around digital currencies.
The conference comes less than two weeks after American voters decided to return Donald Trump to the White House next year. During the campaign, Trump promised to withdraw the US from global institutions and raise tariffs on foreign goods.
John Kirton, head of the G20 Research Group, says this forum is a great tool for countries to prepare for Trump’s second presidency.
“What you really need are powerful leaders, of powerful countries in the world, to talk to each other – because they are the only ones who know what it’s like to face a leader who is in the same category,” he said.
Most of Trudeau’s time at the conference will likely involve informal discussions with various leaders, although he is expected to hold formal talks, too.
On Sunday afternoon, he will participate in an event held by the anti-poverty group Global Citizen on the sidelines of the conference. As of Saturday evening, Trudeau’s office had not specified which leaders he would meet with at the G20.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend the summit, giving her the first chance to meet Trudeau in person since taking office. Both countries are facing a 2026 review of the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement, and both leaders were elected on promises to fight climate change.
“There are concerns about the level of Chinese investment in Mexico that I think needs to be addressed, but I am hopeful that we will be able to work constructively in the coming months,” Trudeau said at a Saturday news conference in Lima. , adding that Mexico has been a “strong partner” for Canada.
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Trudeau is likely to meet with the conference’s host, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly referred to as Lula.
Kirton said Trudeau is addressing Lula’s three key issues at the conference, which are economic equity including Indigenous peoples, climate change and clean energy, and reducing poverty and hunger.
Lula added a fourth priority, artificial intelligence — something Trudeau highlighted when Canada hosted the G7 summit in 2018, and which Trudeau says will be a big focus for Canada as it hosts the G7 next year.
“It’s hard to think of a G20 summit where the Canadian prime minister’s priorities were so aligned,” Kirton said. “There is a lot we can do to help Lula get what she wants.”
Another point of alignment lies in Lula’s desire for global governance reform, something Ottawa has pushed for within the G7 and at the United Nations.
Countries like Brazil say they don’t have enough say in the institutions designed at the end of World War II, when Europe and Washington played a major role in shaping the rules governing military, commercial and sovereign affairs.
Countries in regions such as the Caribbean have similar complaints about financial institutions designed over the decades. They complain that they cannot get enough funding to invest in infrastructure to offset the effects of climate change which is largely caused by industrialized countries.
Instead, they pay higher interest during periods of high inflation. In July 2023, a UN report found nearly half of the world’s population lives in countries that spend more on debt payments than on education or health care.
Brazil prides itself on being a democracy that focuses on what it calls a rational approach to negotiation, although both have been subject to difficulties.
Lula has made climate change one of her main focuses. Brazil has seen massive urban flooding and record forest fires in key areas such as the Amazon, where there has been conflict over natural resource projects.
Neighboring Venezuela’s authoritarian regime has faced economic pain and domestic violence against its own people, sending waves of refugees to Brazil.
In early 2023, Brazil was stunned as supporters of Lula’s predecessor Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s presidential palace, parliament and Supreme Court in what many likened to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Washington.
Since then, Brazil has tried to eradicate the wrong information, blocking access to platform X for five weeks when the company refused to comply with court orders.
At the same time, this country is a member of the BRICS group of developing economies that are looking for more power in the world in countries like China and South Africa, as well as the elimination of American dominance in areas such as the reserve currency.
Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research at the Asia Pacific Foundation, urged Canadians “not to mistakenly include Brazil in the…
He said Ottawa should instead focus on shared priorities with Brazil such as free trade, democracy and respect for global rules – including steps to make those rules work better in the world’s most populous countries.
“It is important as we enter this very dynamic, unpredictable period in international relations to maintain flexible, smart approaches and goals in emerging and middle powers like Brazil,” he said.
Nadjibulla said it was a challenge to strike the right balance, but he said failure to do so would put partners like Brazil in the arms of disruptive powers like Russia and China, and fuel tensions with the West.
“We need to get very close to making those global facilities fit for purpose,” he said.
“That will be a major challenge for the next Trump administration, which has limited commitment to international integration and international institutions, and has a tendency to isolate itself.”
Similar to the two previous G20 summits, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Rio in place of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who since March 2023 has been facing an arrest warrant by the International Court of Justice for his role in the deportation of Ukraine. children.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine caused difficulties in the last two summits, although the leaders were able to agree to call Russia “aggression” in 2022 and “use of force to seek annexation” in the 2023 communiqué.
Kiron wants to know if that war will be mentioned in this year’s joint statement, as well as the Israel-Hamas War, which started after the last summit in New Delhi. Lula caused controversy in February when she compared Israel’s war on Gaza to the Holocaust.
