Has the G20 become the G19?
The Year of the Snake has not been kind to the Group of Twenty (G20). The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, boycotted the first foreign ministerial meeting, which kicked off South Africa’s 2025 presidency of the G20. The subsequent finance ministerial meeting took place without ministers from the United States, China, India, Japan, and Canada. Neither engagement produced a joint statement. Rubio also said that he won’t come to the G20 Summit in November 2025, raising doubt whether President Trump will attend either.
As the United States abandons international treaties and organizations, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, its apparent disdain for the G20 has raised concerns about the role of the United States in the group. These anxieties are especially salient with the United States scheduled to assume the G20’s presidency next year.
A G20 without the United States or its constructive engagement and leadership will be much weaker. It will struggle to sustain broad representation and multilateral cooperation, as well as effective policy coordination and resource mobilization to address pressing global challenges. Even if the rest of the member countries try to carry on, they will struggle to do so on their own.
Tension between the United States and the G20
The current Trump administration has proved to be more ideological than the purely transactional first Trump presidency. During his first term in office, President Trump used the G20 to complain about unfair trade practices by other countries vis-a-vis the United States. He promoted reciprocal dealing under threats of tariffs to rectify persistent US trade deficits as well as implementing policies of tax cuts and deregulation.
In his second term, the Trump administration has actively pushed its anti-DEI (diversity, equality, and inclusion) and anti-climate change agenda, both domestically and internationally. Furthermore, the Trump administration has suspended all its foreign aid pending review, while drastically downsizing the US Agency for International Development’s budget, operations, and staffing. In addition, other major Western countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) have also reprioritized their budgets away from international aid in favor of increased defense spending. The UK alone decided to cut its aid budget from 0.5 percent of its gross national income (GNI) to 0.3 percent by 2027. These actions have left many developing and low-income countries facing sharp funding shortfalls in their development and climate efforts, triggering a health care financing crisis in many of them.
Moreover, according to Project 2025, which the administration has faithfully implemented so far, the United States would consider withdrawing from most international organizations. Republican Senator Mike Lee has already introduced a bill to withdraw from United Nations entirely, and Project 2025 also suggests withdrawing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Each of these institutions is commonly considered as being under US influence and carrying out activities primarily consistent with US interests. The Project’s authors, instead, believe that these organizations have done more harm than good to the world and the United States.
Guided by this belief, Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted the G20 foreign ministerial meeting. He criticized host country South Africa for “doing bad things” by using the G20 to promote DEI and climate activities, adding that his “job is to advance America’s national interests, not to waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism.” If the United States is serious about promoting its agenda of opposing “solidarity, equality, and sustainability” and resisting mobilizing climate finance to help developing countries—among the core objectives of the G20—it would undermine the effectiveness and relevance of the group. If the United States were to withdraw from the G20, that would seriously dent the group’s aspiration to be the premier international forum for policy coordination in the interests of the global economy. If the remaining countries were to carry on despite the United States’ withdrawal, the relative influences in the G19 would change significantly. Global south countries, driven by China and the BRICS, would gain influence at the expense of the West minus the US.
The G20 without the United States?
Generally speaking, whether the United States remains in the G20 but working at cross-purposes or withdraws from it entirely, the group would struggle to fulfill its objectives. First, without the active engagement and leadership of the world’s largest economy, it would be difficult to coordinate policy actions. The group would lack the coverage and influence to deal with global crises—as it did, for example, in the 2008 global financial crisis when the G20 played a key role in forging an internationally coordinated policy response.
Second, without contributions from the United States, G20 efforts to mobilize financing to help developing and low-income countries in their development and climate endeavors would also be significantly limited. Cuts in foreign aid budgets by the United States (the largest foreign aid contributor in terms of volume at $65 billion in 2023) and UK (the fifth largest contributor at $19 billion) are significant. Those cuts will further reduce the already insufficient Official Development Aid (ODA) from developed countries—currently at 0.37 percent of their GNI compared to the UN target of 0.7 percent.
Furthermore, the current focus on raising defense spending, along with large budget deficits and public debt in many Western countries, means that calls to increase capital for multinational development banks such as the World Bank would likely be disappointed. Developing countries will likely face growing shortages of financial assistance for development and climate efforts—which is especially worrisome given lackluster investment from the private sector in those regions. It’s important to keep in mind that the multiplier effect of public investment in developing countries to catalyze private sector investment is very low—generally less than one time, and not a multiple as many political and MDB leaders have hoped. Most importantly, US policy actions would undermine the sense of mutual trust among G20 countries, essential for any multilateral cooperation. Other countries in the group, effectively the G19, will most likely try to carry on. However, on top of the two drawbacks mentioned above, it is difficult to see how they can sustain or rebuild mutual trust in a deeply polarized world. In short, how they could continue to work together despite the United States current posturing would be an important test case of the realignment of international relationships as the post-war world order crumbles.
Hung Tran is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center and senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South; and a former senior official at the International Institute of Finance and the International Monetary Fund.
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