G7 leaders urge Trump to ease off trade war

New Straits Times

5 hours ago

KANANASKIS, Canada: World leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Canada on Monday tried to push US President Donald Trump to back away from his punishing trade war that poses a risk to global economic stability.
At a summit where host Canada hopes to avoid stoking Trump's anger, and with attention on events in the Middle East, leaders still urged the US leader to reverse course on his plans to slap even steeper tariffs on countries across the globe as early as next month.
"Several participants asked to end the tariff dispute as soon as possible. They argued that this dispute weakens the G7's economies and in the end will only strengthen China," a senior German official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The six other countries urged Trump to end his trade conflict as soon as possible, telling him that his protectionist policies were only "damaging to ourselves," the official added.
Most countries represented at the G7 are already subject to a 10 per cent baseline tariff imposed by Trump, under a temporary easing of higher rates, with European countries and Japan also slapped with additional levies on cars and steel and aluminium.
Britain in May was the first country to sign a preliminary deal with Washington to avoid deeper tariffs, and the two leaders at the G7 said they had agreed on the accord's final points and signed the agreement.
"I like them. That's the ultimate protection," Trump told reporters after a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the G7 sidelines.
Trump opened a folder to display the signed documents, only for the paperwork to slide out and spread across the ground.
"Oops, sorry about that," he said as Starmer scrambled to gather up the loose sheets and stuff them back in the folder.
The trade issue is of particular interest to Canada after the Trump administration announced several extra levies on Canadian imports in recent months, throwing the country's economic future into deep uncertainty.
After a meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Canadian government indicated that the two sides could come to a trade truce deal in the next 30 days.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will also have her face-to-face time with Trump as her country tries to renegotiate its three-way North American free trade agreement that also includes Canada.
While there is little expectation that the summit will see a breakthrough in the trade negotiations between the US and the rest of the world, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is part of Trump's delegation.
Dozens of countries are locked in negotiations with Washington to clinch some sort of trade deal before the US imposes stinging reciprocal tariffs, threatened for July 9.
But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week said that the date could be pushed back later for countries thought to be negotiating in good faith.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters he would team up with his counterparts from France and Italy to discuss the US trade threat with Trump directly.
A source at the summit said that French President Emmanuel Macron urged the American leader to quickly end the trade conflict once and for all.
The European Commission handles trade negotiations for the 27-country bloc, and the EU's trade chief Maros Sefcovic was also attending the summit, accompanying the delegation of EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
The EU institutions are official members of the G7, and during the morning session, von der Leyen argued to the leaders that "tariffs – no matter who sets them – are ultimately a tax paid by consumers and businesses at home."
Von der Leyen also met with Trump one-on-one on trade issues in a sit-down that US officials said was at her request.
"We instructed the teams to accelerate their work to strike a good and fair deal. Let's get it done," she said in a post on X.