G7 leaders push Trump on trade as talks continue

World leaders assembled at this week's Group of Seven summit in Canada will try to push United States President Donald Trump to back away from his punishing trade war, which experts say poses a risk to global economic stability.
Most countries represented at the G7 are already subject to Trump's 10 percent baseline tariff with threats of more to come. European countries and Japan face additional levies on cars and steel and aluminium. The G7 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US.
Arriving for a meeting with the host, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said trade would be the 'primary focus' of the summit, which began on Sunday and runs until Tuesday.
The trade issue is of particular interest to Canada after the Trump administration announced several extra levies on Canadian goods in recent months.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has been invited to the summit and will have her own face-to-face time with Trump as her country tries to renegotiate its three-way North American free trade agreement, which also includes Canada.
While there is little expectation that the summit will end with 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 the Trump administration to clinch some sort of trade deal before the US imposes stinging 'reciprocal' tariffs, threatened for July.
Last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said 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.
'[French President] Emmanuel Macron, [Italian Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni and I are firmly resolved to try, over the next two days, to talk again with the US government to see if we can find a solution,' Merz told reporters.
'There will be no solution at this summit, but we may be able to get closer to a solution in small steps,' he added.
The European Commission handles trade negotiations for the 27-country European Union and the bloc's trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, was also attending the summit, accompanying the delegation of commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Shortly after arriving at the summit, von der Leyen on Monday made an appeal to 'keep trade between us fair, predictable and open' in a veiled plea for Trump to back off from his tariff onslaught.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he will talk about implementing the UK's trade deal with the US during his one-on-one with Trump.
The UK in May was the first country to sign a preliminary deal with Washington to avoid deeper tariffs although the 10 percent baseline levy stays in place.
Starmer said the deal was in its final stages and he expects it to be completed 'very soon'.
The trade talks come alongside increasing tensions between Israel and Iran as the two countries exchange attacks. On Monday, an Israeli air strike hit an Iranian state TV station midbroadcast. Calls for de-escalation have been a point of contention at the meeting, according to Al Jazeera's James Bay.
'The problem with the G7 is that you have a range of views. You have President Trump on one end, who it seems will not even sign a statement on de-escalation. You have the Europeans, who have been saying 'de-escalation' since this current situation started on Friday,' Bay said.
'Japan was very different from the other countries. It was very, very strong in its condemnation of Israel's attack on Iran, so you can see just within the G7 a wide range of opinions,' Bay said.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Al Jazeera

35 minutes ago

• Al Jazeera

US Supreme Court lets fuel producers challenge California emissions rules

The dispute centred on an exception granted to California on national vehicle emission standards, allowing it to set stricter rules than federal standards. The United States Supreme Court has sided with fuel producers that had opposed California's standards for vehicle emissions and electric cars under a federal air pollution law, agreeing that their legal challenge to the mandates should not have been dismissed. The justices in a 7-2 ruling on Friday overturned a lower court's decision to dismiss the lawsuit by a Valero Energy subsidiary and fuel industry groups. The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs lacked the required legal standing to challenge a 2022 US Environmental Protection Agency decision to let California set its own regulations. 'The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,' conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision. The dispute centred on an exception granted to California during Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration to national vehicle emission standards set by the agency under the landmark Clean Air Act anti-pollution law. Though states and municipalities are generally preempted from enacting their own limits, Congress let the EPA waive the preemption rule to let California set certain regulations that are stricter than federal standards. The EPA's 2022 action reinstated a waiver for California to set its own tailpipe emissions limits and zero-emission vehicle mandate through 2025, reversing a 2019 decision made during Republican President Donald Trump's first administration rescinding the waiver. Advertisement Valero's Diamond Alternative Energy and related groups challenged the reinstatement of California's waiver, arguing that the decision exceeded the EPA's power under the Clean Air Act and inflicted harm on their bottom line by lowering demand for liquid fuels. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the lawsuit in 2024, finding that the challengers lacked the necessary standing to bring their claims because there was no evidence that a ruling in their favour might affect the decisions of auto manufacturers in a way that would result in fewer electric and more combustion vehicles to be sold. Sceptical court California, the most populous US state, has received more than 100 waivers under the Clean Air Act. Sign up for Al Jazeera Americas Coverage Newsletter US politics, Canada's multiculturalism, South America's geopolitical rise—we bring you the stories that matter. Subscribe Your subscription failed. Please try again. Please check your email to confirm your subscription By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy protected by reCAPTCHA The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken a sceptical view towards broad authority for federal regulatory agencies and has restricted the powers of the EPA in some important rulings in recent years. In 2024, the court blocked the EPA's 'Good Neighbor' rule aimed at reducing ozone emissions that may worsen air pollution in neighbouring states. In 2023, the court hobbled the EPA's power to protect wetlands and fight water pollution. In 2022, it imposed limits on the agency's authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce coal and gas-fired power plant carbon emissions.

Al Jazeera

2 hours ago

• Al Jazeera

Has Trump put off joining the Israel-Iran conflict for two weeks?

Trump appeared to delay US action on Iran for two weeks on Thursday, but is it just a negotiation tactic? United States President Donald Trump will decide Washington's course of action in relation to the Israel-Iran conflict in two weeks' time, the White House said on Thursday. Speculation has been rising this week that the US could decide to assist its longstanding ally, Israel, in strikes against Iran, which it claims are designed to neutralise Iran's nuclear programme. In particular, Israel wants the US to provide 'bunker buster' bombs, which may be able to penetrate deep within the mountain in northwest Iran, where the Fordow nuclear facility is located. This comes after a week of Trump shifting his position on the conflict. Here is what we know: What has Trump said about potential US action in Iran? On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared what she described as a direct quote from the US president with reporters: 'Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' How has Trump changed his position on the Iran-Israel conflict? When Israel first attacked Iran late on June 13, the Trump administration clearly stated that it had not been involved, calling Israel's attack 'unilateral action'. It has become clear since then, however, that the US did have knowledge of the attacks in advance. Trump also said he believed Iran was 'very close' to having a nuclear weapon during the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Canada this week, contradicting his own US intelligence reports. This marked a shift from his position in May, when he made public statements that Tehran and Washington were close to a nuclear deal. Advertisement On Wednesday, Trump refused to say whether the US would join the conflict. 'I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do,' he told reporters outside the White House. Finally, on Thursday, Trump appeared to give a two-week deadline for talks with Iran to succeed before the US would take action. Sign up for Al Jazeera Americas Coverage Newsletter US politics, Canada's multiculturalism, South America's geopolitical rise—we bring you the stories that matter. Subscribe Your subscription failed. Please try again. Please check your email to confirm your subscription By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy protected by reCAPTCHA Does this mean Trump has delayed a US attack on Iran for two weeks? No. It also does not necessarily mean the US will attack Iran at all. Leavitt remained ambiguous on what could happen after two weeks. The press secretary said: 'The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution … he is a peacemaker-in-chief. He is the peace-through-strength president. And so, if there's a chance for diplomacy, the president's always going to grab it. But he's not afraid to use strength as well.' But Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser and director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that while two weeks would give time for more negotiations with Iran, it would also provide the US with time to 'flow in additional forces should it decide to join Israel in the conflict'. For now, it is impossible to say which of these two possibilities is more likely – or if the 'two weeks' mentioned by Trump is even a deadline at all. 'I don't even know if President Trump knows what he wants,' Iranian American analyst Negar Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. 'He campaigned as the president of peace … he promised he's going to end conflicts. Russia-Ukraine hasn't ended. Gaza has escalated, and he just let the third big Middle East war, which looks like a regime-change war, start under his watch. So, he says one thing. He does another.' Others believe Trump's 'two weeks' comment is a negotiation tactic to apply pressure on Iran during talks. Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told Al Jazeera that Trump could be attempting to build leverage with threats to strong-arm Iran into accepting his demands of 'total surrender'. 'I think he's trying to present himself as this madman who is unpredictable, and in so doing, he can then insist on this very hard line that Iran has refused to accept for decades of full dismantlement of its [nuclear] enrichment programme,' Abdi told Al Jazeera. 'The delay certainly could be part of a broader negotiating strategy which exploits Iran's weakened position as a result of wide-ranging military strikes to extract more substantial concessions from Iran on the nuclear issue and potentially on other points of contention as well, for example its ballistic missiles programme,' Yacoubian said. Advertisement ⁠'It's extremely difficult to predict what will happen next,' she added. 'President Trump's idiosyncratic negotiating strategy alongside his instinctual, 'from-the-gut' decision-making approach underscores the unpredictability of the coming days – which may well be the point!' Has Trump declared deadlines before, and has he stuck to them? In the past, Trump has assigned similar timelines relating to Iran's nuclear programme, the Russia-Ukraine war and global trade tariffs. But he does not always stick to them. 'Imposing deadlines stands as perhaps the one predictable element of Trump's approach to finding solutions to complex problems,' said Yacoubian. 'Setting explicit deadlines has characterised Trump's negotiating style in several realms, from Ukraine to politically sensitive domestic challenges.' Iran-Israel conflict In the lead-up to the current conflict, Trump says he gave Iran a 60-day deadline to negotiate an agreement over its nuclear programme, but talks continued beyond its expiry, Yacoubian noted. In the end, it was Israel which took action, launching a series of strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites on June 13. Russia-Ukraine war Since the beginning of his presidency in January this year, Trump has been attempting to lead peace negotiations to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. On May 28, Trump set a two-week deadline to determine whether his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was willing to end the conflict. Trump told reporters then: 'Within two weeks. We're gonna find out whether or not [Putin is] tapping us along or not. And if he is, we'll respond a little bit differently.' As the two-week window approached an end, the New York Post asked Trump in a podcast whether Putin cared about Russia losing thousands of soldiers in Ukraine. He said, 'I'm starting to think maybe he doesn't.' Since the two-week window ended, Russia and Ukraine do not appear to be any closer to a peace agreement. But Trump has not signalled a shift in US policy towards Russia despite his previous threat. A report by the Reuters news agency, published on Tuesday, further claimed that the Trump administration had disbanded an interagency working group aimed at placing pressure on Russia to speed up talks with Ukraine. Reuters cited three unnamed US officials in its report. The existence of this working group had not been made public. Trade tariffs Trump has also announced pauses and delays to his on-again-off-again trade tariffs first imposed on trading partners of the US in April. In April, he announced a 90-day pause for all its tariff targets except China, with which the US reached a trade deal earlier this month. The tariff pause is set to expire on July 8. However, on June 11, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers that Trump was likely to push back the July 8 deadline.

Al Jazeera

3 hours ago

• Al Jazeera

Project 2025: Governance reform or Culture War battle plan?

Project 2025 became a flashpoint during the 2024 presidential campaign. The sweeping conservative policy blueprint aims to overhaul the federal government and reshape United States society. How closely is President Donald Trump following its direction? And how much does it test the limits of the Constitution? Marc Lamont Hill talks to Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation.