For this year’s G20 summit, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri hosted the other nineteen members of the Group Twenty in Buenos Aires. Starting November 30, its meetings were marked with formal and informal interactions and discussions between representatives from each country — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and the (not so much of a country) European Union. Despite the highly publicized pleasantries, the summit didn’t get off to a smooth start for President Trump.
Firstly, President Trump canceled a meeting with President Putin, citing Russian aggression in Ukraine that centers around the border dispute in Crimea. Trump and his representatives assured everyone that the sole reason for canceling the meeting with Putin truly was because of the dispute with Ukraine. According to NBC, however, Maria Zakharova, the top spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hinted that Trump had nixed the one-on-one meeting because his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying in front of Congress for details about a Trump real estate project in Moscow. Essentially, the accusation concerns a Trump Tower penthouse that Trump supposedly gifted Putin. Whether the allegations are true or not is still unknown.
But, despite Trump-Putin tensions, the real showdown of the has to be the one between Trump and President Xi Jinping from China. Recently, both countries have declared an aggressive tariff war against each other. According to BBC, Trump said that he will go ahead with plans to raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods — first introduced in September — from 10 to 25 percent in January 2019. ANd here we have yet another tariff threat against China. Furthermore, the BBC cited Trump who said that if talks were unsuccessful, he would hit the remaining $267 billion of annual Chinese exports to the U.S. with a similar increase.
Trump is holding “pull-aside” meetings in G20 summit to interact with representatives of foreign countries. However, this meeting is not as long as other formal meetings. So far, President Trump has not yet declared any scheduled “pull-aside” meeting with Russia, but the meeting with President Xi is scheduled on Saturday evening. CNN reported, “Trump said his National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and his representatives are dealing with Chinese “on a constant basis” in the lead-up to this dinner with Xi and the President and said the US officials are seeing ‘some good signs’.” December 1st, 2018, shortly after the meeting between President Trump and President Xi, USA Today reported, “President Donald Trump’s administration said Saturday it will temporarily hold off on a new round of tariffs aimed at China, the first signal of a possible truce after months of escalating trade tension between the two nations.”
-Jeff Koo
