Is Trump’s MAGA magic waning as G20 leaders snub him?
Certainly G20 leaders, in the absence of Trump who boycotted the summit, felt no need to be deferential to his agenda, defying pressure from the White House not to issue a joint statement.
When they did it contained everything that the absent Trump rails against, giving life to the old saying that if you do not attend the lunch, you are lunch.
The G20 statement strongly backed the Paris climate agreement, mentioned “net zero” when emphasising the need to meet ambitious climate goals and powerfully endorsed free trade and the multilateral trading system.
On the sidelines of the summit, attended by Anthony Albanese, G20 leaders also pushed back against Trump’s controversial pro-Russian peace ultimatum for Ukraine.
Not surprisingly, the White House hit back, accusing G20 leaders of bucking the G20 tradition of consensus statements among its members.
One swallow does not a summer make, but the willingness of the G20 to risk Trump’s wrath by issuing such a traditional, non-Trumpian, rules-based-order-style statement on global issues, suggests that Trump and his MAGA agenda do not strike the same fear into global leaders as they once did.
It mirrors the fact that Trump is struggling to assert the clout he showed even a few months ago on a range of key issues. His sweeping tariff regime, which once injected barely disguised terror into countries around the world, is now wobbling precariously. The President this month signed an executive order exempting hundreds of food products, including Australian beef, from his tariffs. This was in response to the fact that cost-of-living pressure in the US has not fallen, largely because of his tariffs, leading to a dive in Trump’s popularity. What’s more, Trump’s entire tariff regime is under threat from the US Supreme Court which will decide early next year whether the tariffs are constitutional.
Trump’s influence is also under pressure from within his own party after Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hugely popular figure within the MAGA base announced she would leave Congress after he branded her a “traitor”.
She presents a growing slice of the MAGA base that is unhappy with Trump over continued inflation, his tardiness over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and US involvement in foreign hotspots from the Middle East to Ukraine to Venezuela.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found Trump’s approval rating had fallen to 38 per cent, the lowest of his second term.
Trump is also facing pushback from G20 leaders and others over his ultimatum to Ukraine to accept within a week a US-sponsored peace plan that is widely viewed as heavily favourable to Ukraine’s invader, Russia.
In a joint statement, nutted out on the sidelines of the G20 summit, a number of nations, including the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and the EU pushed back on the Trump-approved peace plan, saying it was “a basis which will require additional work” and that “borders must not be changed by force”.
The leading members of the G20 have expressed solidarity with Ukraine in the face of the peace plan, which was hatched by the US with Russian officials, without Ukraine’s involvement. It contains many of the demands Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has pushed for, including the surrender of territory held by Ukraine and major limits to the size of its military and its ability to defend itself in the future.
This G20 outcome will anger Trump, but he will have no choice but to attend the next summit, which is scheduled to be held in Miami next November.
This will be shortly after the midterm elections where the Republicans are expected to lose their majority in the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate. By that stage Trump will be entering the lame-duck phase of his presidency.
Despite his recent setbacks, Trump still brandishes more raw power than most presidents with his unpredictable crash-through style.
The Middle East peace plan, although still fragile, would not have occurred had Trump not had the ability to monster both Israel and Hamas into striking a deal.
But perhaps it is also true that we have now passed what some have called “peak Trump”. If so, the G20’s defiance of the President’s agenda will be seen as another example.
More Coverage
Orwellsian tale provides a rich harvest of hypocrisy
The joint defiance of Donald Trump shown by G20 leaders at their summit in South Africa begs the question as to whether the days of the President monstering the global community on climate, trade and security are waning.