“Trump may choose to align the 2027 G7 agenda with the themes he establishes in Miami, rather than building on the legacy of Évian. If so, the traditional sequencing – where G7 priorities cascade into the G20 – could invert”
South Africa declining to transfer lead- ership to a US embassy representative. Diplomatic tensions deepened when Trump withheld an invitation to South African president Cyril Ramaphosa to attend Miami, while extending one to Kenya’s president William Ruto, leading a much smaller African country. This gesture has been read in Johannesburg as a signal of South Africa’s future role in the forum. MIAMI: AN UNCERTAIN TRAJECTORY If Donald Trump departs from G20 con- tinuity, he may still find elements of the G7 Évian agenda useful. French pres- ident Emmanuel Macron’s priorities overlap in part with Trump’s own concerns. Trade imbalances and the reform of trade rules are central to Trump’s economic strategy, particu- larly in his second term. The G7 could converge on a shared position regard- ing excess Chinese industrial capacity and carry that consensus into the G20, where President Xi Jinping is expected to attend. Similarly, concerns about illicit cross-border flows – particularly fentanyl – could move from Évian onto the Miami agenda. At the same time, tensions between Trump and other G7 leaders – over trade disputes and the war involving Iran – cast doubt on sustained US engagement with the G7 process. Trump has previ- ously questioned Russia’s exclusion from the group and has now invited President Vladimir Putin to the G20 in Miami despite the ongoing war in Ukraine. (Russia is a member of the G20, but the president has not participated in person since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.) The G20’s broader membership – including China, India, Saudi Arabia and Argentina – offers Trump a more expansive platform for geopolitical posi- tioning than the G7’s narrower coalition of advanced democracies. This dynamic raises a more structural question. Trump may choose to align the 2027 G7 agenda with the themes he establishes in Miami, rather than build- ing on the legacy of Évian. If so, the traditional sequencing – where G7 priorities cascade into the G20 – could invert. What would global governance look like if the G7 became, in effect, a sub- committee of the G20? It is a question that once seemed hypothetical. Under current conditions, it is no longer unthinkable.
G7 FLEXIBILITY, G20 CONTINUITY The G20 exhibits greater continuity. Its agenda is anchored in development, finance, debt sustainability, climate transition, inclusive growth, food secu- rity and global governance reform, alongside a persistent emphasis on the Global South. Unlike the G7, where host countries often reweight priorities, G20 presidencies tend to add a signature initiative reflecting national experience without fundamentally altering the agenda’s structure. The United States will host the G20 summit in December 2026 in Miami and the G7 summit in 2027. In both cases, the host will be Trump. His record suggests that procedural continuity cannot be assumed. At Charlevoix, he demonstrated a willingness to disrupt both substance and process. If he disa- grees with an agenda, he will challenge it publicly; if he rejects an item, he may simply remove it. This raises uncertainty for the Miami G20. Trump did not attend the 2025 G20 summit hosted by South Africa, and no senior US officials did so in his place. That absence disrupted the customary public handover of the presidency, with
// CHRISTOPHER SANDS Christopher Sands is the director of the Center for US-Canada Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Stud- ies in Washington DC and a visiting fellow in global economy and development at the Brookings Institution.
christophersands1. substack.com
137 globalgovernancemedia.org
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online