Historians may look back at this weekend’s gathering of world leaders in the French port city of Biarritz as a squandered opportunity.
The global economy is weakening, trade wars are escalating and major economies like Germany are sliding toward recession. But Group of Seven allies are so divided there’s little hope for the type of coordinated response that sprang from similar meetings a decade ago.
Amid the growing financial crisis in 2008, then-President George W. Bush called an emergency G20 meeting that yielded a roadmap to combat the worldwide slowdown. Along with subsequent multilateral actions, it’s widely seen as having helped avoid a deeper downturn.
Now disagreements over everything from Iran’s nuclear program to Brexit to the future of the global trading system likely will stand in the way of unified solutions.
U.S. President Donald Trump has dismissed accusations his tariff assault on China and threats to impose duties on Europe’s auto industry are contributing to any slowdown.
As Shawn Donnan, Raymond Colitt and Toru Fujioka write, the brightest economic hope for this round may be just that things don’t get any worse. And while the world’s political leaders squabble, it may be left to central bankers conducting their own retreat some 5,000 miles away in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to save the day.
Bloomberg.com
