The G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, bringing together national leaders, heads of international organizations and regional blocs such as the European Union and the African Union, discussed the world's most pressing challenges – ranging from climate change, inequality, armed conflict and global governance reform. The meetings provided a number of relevant insights about how nations are preparing for Donald Trump's return to the White House in January.
Leaders aligned with Trump, such as Argentina's Javier Milei, can be expected to become less constrained on the international stage and may intensify their strategies to undermine global cooperation in areas such as climate change and gender equality.
Other powers, such as China, see an opportunity to fill the vacuum the United States is likely to leave behind in some of these areas, and seek to project themselves as stable and predictable partners committed to fostering multilateral cooperation.
Regional powers such as Brazil, which have more limited clout on the global scale, may broaden attempts to exercise leadership in specific areas such as food security where they are well-positioned to contribute.
Given the growing difficulties to reach meaningful consensus among all G20 members, Trump's return is likely to accelerate, according to diplomats at the summit, the emergence of more pragmatic, mini-lateral initiatives between like-minded actors willing to move forward in a specific policy area, be it in the realm of security, climate or trade.
Just like Indonesia in 2022 and India in 2023, this year's host of the G20 summit sought to emphasize global challenges to which it can offer meaningful perspectives or solutions. Brazil, an agricultural powerhouse and the world's largest exporter of several commodities such as soybeans, beef and sugar, therefore made the fight against hunger a priority of the summit, and launched the ‘Global Alliance Against Hunger’, to which more than 80 countries signed up to. According to UN estimates, more than 730 million people – nearly 9% of the world's population – faced hunger in 2023.
While the 22-page long Leaders’ Declaration of the group, which represents two-thirds of the world's population more than 80% of its GDP and trade, included few surprises and remained vague on numerous thorny geopolitical challenges in order to achieve consensus, merely being able to convince leaders to sign an agreement at all was touted as a success by the Brazilian government and can, given the profound tensions between member states such as Russia and the United States, be seen as a diplomatic achievement.
President Lula has utilized the G20 to project himself as a statesman domestically at a time when the economy is facing increasing headwinds. While the summit's declaration's mention of a global tax on the super-rich is unlikely to become a reality anytime soon, the idea is popular among Lula voters and helps the Brazilian government underline its commitment to reducing the country's profound socio-economic inequality.
For several reasons, diplomats at the summit said they believe the space for broad agreements in the context of the G20 would continue to shrink. Even if a ceasefire or peace agreement can be negotiated in Ukraine, the deep mistrust between Russia and the West is unlikely to be overcome anytime soon. As Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment points out, the fight against the US and its allies has become an organizing principle of Putin's reign, which Russia's president is unlikely to give up. That is set to limit space for cooperation on issues ranging from the fight against climate change, nuclear proliferation and attempts to deal with security challenges in Africa and the Middle East.
While Argentina did not block the agreement, its negotiators signaled that, ultimately, they were not endorsing all parts of the final declaration – yet there seems little doubt that Milei, starting next year, will have the space to intensify his opposition and swim in the slipstream of the Trump administration, as Brazil's former president Bolsonaro did during this first two years in office, which coincided with the first Trump administration. Countries like Saudi Arabia, traditionally critical of commitments to gender equality, may also feel empowered to dissent from parts of future declarations.
China's strategy in Rio, on the other hand, signaled that it will react to Trump's return by projecting itself as a reliable partner, contrasting what many expect will be a return to a somewhat less predictable foreign policy strategy in the United States. While policy makers in Beijing are no doubt concerned about the negative impact a renewed trade war will have on the world economy – and China's growth prospects in particular – there is also an undeniable sense of opportunity as Trump's retreat from several multilateral fora will reduce global trust in the United States. Seeking to contrast Trump's dislike of multilateralism, Xi Jinping defended “true multilateralism” during his visit, aware of how much countries like Brazil (large but vulnerable and strongly dependent on functioning multilateral fora to defend their interests) are concerned about Trump's return. It was no surprise that numerous Brazilian cabinet members skipped the G20 Summit to prepare for the bilateral visit of Xi Jinping to Brasília, where numerous deals were signed in the realm of infrastructure investments and technology cooperation. Today, roughly 30 percent of Brazil’s exports go to China—more than to the EU and the United States combined.
Behind closed doors, several Western diplomats were decidedly pessimistic about the G20's capacity to function in the future and alluded to the pall of geopolitical twilight descending on the post-Cold War multilateral order. One described the Rio summit as a “last hurrah” of an order which is bound to change significantly without the United States’ broad support. While the first Trump administration was seen, by numerous observers around the world, as a one-time aberration which only led to temporary change, Trump's return makes Biden look, retrospectively, like the outlier – after all, the incoming president is not fully supportive with principles which were fundamental to this order, such as trade liberalization, a commitment to multilateralism and a rules-based order and the defense of democracy (the United States’ adherence to these principles, of course, was often imperfect, but it never renounced them in principle) until now. While the so-called ‘à la carte multilateralism’ at future G20 summits, where countries can opt out of parts of the declaration and the commitment it implies, is likely to still generate some benefit and justify the continued existence of the grouping, it undoubtedly limits the room for the type of broad-based cooperation needed to successfully address the complex global challenges ahead.
