The
Group of Seven (G7) has had a bad couple of decades. Riven by
internal differences and lack of common purpose, replaced
by the G20 as
the effective steering group for the global economy, and belittled
by Donald Trump,
the forum bringing together the world’s seven largest advanced
market democracies—the United States, Japan, Germany, the United
Kingdom, France, Italy, and Canada—plus the European Union, has far
to go to restore its credibility. But in 2021, under the United
Kingdom’s presidency, the G7 will be a useful testing ground for
three propositions about global governance.
The
first is whether UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s notion
of “Global
Britain” has
substance. The G7 summit scheduled for June 11-13 in Cornwall will be
one of two major international gatherings hosted by the United
Kingdom in its first full year of independence from the European
Union. (The other is the United
Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) in
November.) Johnson has wisely ditched his earlier idea of formally
supplanting the G7 with a “D10” of leading democracies, opting
instead to invite four other countries—Australia, India, South
Korea, and South Africa—as guests at this year’s G7 meetings.
Optics—from
the smoothness of the summit logistics to Johnson’s own performance
as chair—will play a role in whether Britain can restore some of
its luster as a global leader, but ultimately the success of the
Cornwall summit will be judged by its substantive outcomes. London
has laid out an ambitious
agenda for
its host year under the familiar banner, “Build Back Better.” It
promises collective action in four areas: pandemic
recovery and resilience, climate
change, free
and fair trade,
and shared values (more on the last of these below). Pre-summit
meetings of ministers on these topics have produced encouraging
roadmaps for G7 cooperation; the question is whether Johnson can
engender a sense of unity of purpose among leaders and collective
determination to deliver tangible action in these areas. (If recent
reports of a possible G7 agreement on a global
minimum corporate tax hold
up, this will certainly count as a big win for Johnson.)
G7
solidarity will largely hinge on a second test: whether the United
States and European Union can patch up their differences and agree to
work together on global challenges. Given the G7’s
disproportionately transatlantic membership, harmony between
Washington and Brussels is a precondition for broader G7
effectiveness. The two sides have sparred for years over trade,
regulation, privacy, and taxation, and four years of haranguing and
imposition of tariffs by former president Donald Trump have kindled
European yearnings for “strategic
autonomy.” Hopes
of a reset after the November 2020 U.S. elections were set back by
the European Commission’s conclusion of a Comprehensive
Agreement on Investment (CAI) with
China at the end of the year, despite clear signals of concern from
the Biden transition team. Moreover, the fact that, four months into
its term, the Biden administration has still not removed Trump’s
2018 steel and aluminum tariffs remains a thorn in Brussels’ side.
(It also highlights an awkward tension
in Biden’s international economic policy,
namely
between the administration’s impulse to work with allies and its
equally strong determination to protect American workers.)
Yet
there have also been promising signs
of rapprochement between
Washington and Brussels. Less than one month after the U.S. elections
last fall, the European
Commission laid out “a
new, forward-looking transatlantic agenda for global cooperation.”
President Biden signaled a
clear recommitment to the transatlantic alliance in February, calling
out the need for continued U.S.-EU cooperation in response to shared
challenges, including Covid-19, climate change, and strategic
competition with China. The two sides have agreed to put on hold
their long-standing battle over subsidies
to Boeing and Airbus and
the more recent spat over steel
tariffs. The
new transatlantic goodwill—assuming it continues—improves the
prospects for meaningful outcomes at the G7 summit and beyond.
Driving
the United States and European Union together is their growing
concern about the behavior of large authoritarian powers, notably
Russia and China. President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is seen as
menace on both sides of the Atlantic, invading and pressuring
neighboring countries, assassinating political rivals, and launching
cyberattacks on Western assets. G7
foreign ministers spoke
out forcefully against Russia’s coercive behavior earlier this
month, though no new action was announced. European concerns about
China, meanwhile, have lagged behind those in the United States, but
the gap is closing as a result of Beijing’s
inroads into Eastern and Southern Europe, its repression
in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and its sanctioning
of European politicians and civil
society organizations.
At
least three of the G7’s invited guests—Australia, India, and
South Korea—have been subject to various forms of coercion
by Beijing and
will also welcome a group stand against this behavior.
All
of this points to the G7’s third test: can this group of advanced
market democracies step up to the challenge of defending the
international rules and norms that it has long championed but that
are increasingly under strain? Despite its early mistakes, China has
managed the disruptions of Covid-19 better than most advanced
countries, creating a perception in some quarters (not
only in Beijing)
that authoritarian state capitalism may be a more effective form of
governance than market democracy. Biden has made clear that he sees
the competition between democracy and authoritarianism as a
generational challenge; as he said in his first
press conference in
March, “This is a battle between the utility of democracies in the
twenty-first century and autocracies. We’ve got to prove democracy
works.”
Johnson
apparently shares this sentiment and wants to use the G7 as a
platform for defending democratic values. As mentioned earlier,
London has put forward “championing our shared values” as one of
the four themes of its G7 host year. It has identified global
development, including girls’ education, food security, health, and
sustainable development financing, as the centerpiece of the group’s
policy work on shared values. In addition to these critical topics,
it will be important to watch what the G7 says and does about another
high-stakes policy issue for market democracies: data governance. As
we have written, this
is the missing “fifth pillar” of the global economic order, and
the G7 has an opportunity to begin building a favorable system of
international rules, standards, and norms for data flows and related
issues.
Expectations for substantial policy progress at any given summit meeting should be suitably low. The question is whether G7 leaders in Cornwall can present a compelling vision for cooperation among like-minded market democracies, describing the “city on the hill” to which the group is headed, and then lay down a few tangible “bricks in the road” toward that destination, before passing the trowel to next year’s G7 host, Germany.
Matthew
P. Goodman is senior vice president for economics at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Source: A CSIS Commentary, May 27, 2021