Trump’s 'g2' Ambitions Haunt Summit In France

The world’s largest economies want to come together to act on China’s growing economic threat. President Donald Trump is more interested in going it alone.

Trump basically spelled out as much in a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, declaring the tete-a-tete “the G2.”

“This is the G2,” the president told reporters, referring to a knock off of the Group of 7 summit of the world’s largest economies and democracies. “They have G7, they have the G8, this is the G2.”

That approach is undercutting efforts by traditional allies, led by Europe, to present a united front against China and its flood of cheap exports that are swamping Western markets. French President Emmanuel Macron has made the issue a priority as he hosts the G7 summit this week in Évian-les-Bains , France — convening a call earlier this week with fellow G7 leaders as well China, India and Brazil to discuss the problem. But the White House didn’t even mention China in the list of priorities it has for the summit.

Further complicating the picture, Trump’s tariff buildup against China has pushed more Chinese exports into other Western markets, none more so than Europe.

“The United States is not waiting for the world to hold hands and find a coordinated way to address [China’s behavior]. We're taking action now through a variety of measures,” a senior administration official told reporters at a Saturday briefing. But the official added, “we are happy to cooperate and coordinate with other countries on how to resolve those massive imbalances.” They were granted anonymity per the ground rules of the call.

The Trump administration plans to hold more one-on-one conversations with Chinese officials on the subject — indeed Trump and Xi have already slated another summit in Washington in September.

A separate White House official, granted anonymity to preview the summit, said the administration’s policy priorities for the summit include investment partnerships, innovation in artificial intelligence, Ebola outbreak response, critical mineral supply chain resilience, illegal immigration and drug smuggling and energy exports.

But Europe is starting to recognize it will need to take initiative,on its own.

In addition to the Macron call, which didn’t yield substantive results, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is hosting a summit with fellow EU leaders on Thursday to discuss policy options for curbing the Chinese supply glut. In May, the European Union voted to raise steel tariffs, a move that brought it in alignment with U.S. efforts to address China’s manufacturing capabilities in steel.

“Where others fail to comply with common rules, we cannot and will not stand idly by,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in the German parliament last week, adding that Berlin “is on alert against trade practices by other countries that distort competition.” Germany is particularly vulnerable to low-priced imports because its key industrial sectors — autos, pharmaceuticals and chemical manufacturing — are under siege from imported Chinese competitors backed by government subsidies.

“Europe seems ready to move on China,” said Chad Bown, who served as the chief economist in the State Department during the Biden administration. “It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for in the United States for a really long time. And there just doesn’t seem to be any interest in it” from the Trump administration.

Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, embodied that attitude at an event at the Reagan National Economic Forum at the end of May. “I think the relationship between President Trump and President Xi is real. That may make Europe nervous,” Puzder said. “But the things that [China] was dumping on the U.S., they’re now dumping on Europe. So they’re concerned and they’re reacting to China for sure.”

EU countries, however, are not ready to pursue some of Trump’s most confrontational trade policies, like unilateral tariffs, fearing it would trigger a trade war that could backfire very fast. Instead, the 27-nation bloc is pledging a diplomatic approach — intensifying talks with Beijing and diversifying trade partners.

The lack of Western unity is hampering G7 countries’ response to China’s oversupply, even as every member — from the U.S. to Germany to Canada to Japan — struggles with similar issues.

In Europe, “part of what slows them down is the fear of retaliation,” Bown said. “And the fear that we don’t have their back if they face that coercion and retaliation by the Chinese.”

Japan has already experienced that.

Angered last fall by the new Japanese prime minister’s saber rattling on Taiwan, a self-governing island China considers part of its territory, Beijing has been choking off exports of rare earths for more than four months, threatening Tokyo’s manufacturing of everything from cars to cell phones and other high-tech products.

Trump, meanwhile, traveled to Beijing for chummy photo-ops with China’s authoritarian ruler while bringing up the idea of replacing the G7 with a G2, an idea he also floated last fall.

A former official in Tokyo said government officials there have watched warily as Trump praised Xi, calling him, among other things, a “friend,” “a tremendous leader” and “very powerful.”

“Japan has very good reason to be alarmed about the concept,” of a G2, whether formal or de facto, said the former official.

So do the rest of the G7.

Even talk of cutting out Europe, Canada and Japan feeds suspicions that Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy will lead the U.S. to make investment agreements that could harm the interests of its traditional allies and partners. A year of punitive tariffs, threats to invade Greenland and insistence that Canada become the 51st state have heightened those concerns around the world.

When talking to reporters Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was asked about the idea that the U.S. is out-of-step with the rest of the G7.

“There will be some issues where there are strongly held views by one of the G7 partners that, you know, are more extreme than others,” Carney replied, though he rejected the idea of there being a “G6 plus one” with the U.S. operating entirely separately. “I mean, each of us may have examples of that,” Carney said.

At the same time, foreign leaders doubt Trump can meaningfully curb Chinese behavior on his own.

"The Chinese government will 200 percent capitalize on this idea of a G2, but they’ll suck out the sweet and spit out the sour,” said a Washington-based Asian diplomat granted anonymity to speak freely. “It’s similar to when China was admitted to the World Trade Organization on the belief that it would transform China into a responsible, reliable rule-following country — in reality it hasn’t happened at all.”

Megan Messerly and Mike Blanchfield contributed to this report.