Opinion

In Osaka, the G20 summit takes a back seat to the Donald Trump show

The relevance of the forum is again in question, and not just because of the US president’s headline-making meetings with other leaders. It’s time to pare down the unwieldy talkfest to make it a gathering of consequence

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Kevin Rafferty, a journalist for 50 years, started writing about cricket and football for The Observer when at Oxford University.

Published: 1:00am, 3 Jul 2019Updated: 1:55am, 3 Jul 2019

Phew! Osaka and the G20 – and the rest of the world – survived the passage of the “Trumphoon”, although it left a bill running to millions of dollars for costs, disruption of lives, closure of schools, traffic dislocation and general chaos visited on Japan, not to speak of important structural damage to the pretence of global governance.

Surely, it is beyond high time for sensible leaders – if there are any – to come together to replace this costly, wasteful showpiece with something that works.

US President Donald Trump’s press conference after the G20 summit demonstrated the whirling damage he causes. His opening statement was a gush of exaggerations, half-truths, fantasies and lies: every deal before he arrived was the worst in the world, including Nafta and the World Trade Organisation; his election had turned the US economy and the stock market into the “hottest” the world has ever seen; he could fix any problem in an instant, immigration solved overnight, for one, but for the Democrats’ opposition.

But just when you think he might be certifiable, Trump showed that his bluster is part of his shtick as a real estate salesman with an increasingly opportunistic eye on re-election in 2020.