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Finance ministers from many of the world’s largest economies are poised to skip G20 meetings in South Africa this week, underscoring the declining relevance of the body at a time when global co-operation is faltering.
Among the countries that are not expected to send their finance ministers to Cape Town are India, China, Brazil and Mexico, according to people familiar with the organisation of the meetings.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said last week he would remain in Washington — a move that followed secretary of state Marco Rubio’s decision to not “waste taxpayer money or coddle anti-Americanism” by attending a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in South Africa last week.
Japan’s finance minister Katsunobu Kato will stay in Tokyo to focus on state budget talks, while the EU’s economics commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis is expected to remain in Brussels, officials have said.
The G20 has struggled for relevance in recent years, as the rivalry between the US and China deepens and members split over the response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Analysts warned the poor turnout would cast more doubt over the mechanisms for global co-operation at a time when US President Donald Trump is calling into question key aspects of the postwar international order.
Mark Sobel, US chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum and a former official at the US Treasury, said the G20 was “obviously in a very weakened state”, though he argued that Bessent’s decision not to attend the meetings was “a big mistake”.
Lesetja Kganyago, head of South African Reserve Bank, who will chair a meeting of central bankers, played down the lack of attendees, insisting that all of the members of the G20 would be represented at the meetings, even if some finance ministers will not physically attend.
“Any decision that comes out of here is a decision of the G20,” Kganyago told the Financial Times.
US Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell is expected to attend the meetings along with central bankers from a host of other nations, including Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank.
Some European finance ministers are also expected to make the trip, including UK chancellor Rachel Reeves.
G20’s waning influence is in sharp contrast to a decade and a half ago, when the body helped co-ordinate the response to the global financial crisis.
Bessent and Rubio’s absence also follows a fierce attack by Trump on South Africa, which he accused of “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people very badly”, citing a new land expropriation law.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged at the gathering of foreign ministers last week that there was “a lack of consensus among major powers, including in the G20, on how to respond to . . . issues of global significance”.
Last week, the foreign ministers’ meeting ended with no joint statement, with only a summary of the talks released.
At a meeting this week in Cape Town of the B20 — the business stream of the G20 — the US absence was a focus of discussion.
Cas Coovadia, the former head of South Africa’s largest business chamber, Business Unity South Africa, said even if the US government opted out of the G20, businesses from the country would continue to co-operate.
“We have been assured by our counterparts in the US, the US Chamber of Commerce, that the commitment of American businesses to the B20 remains, despite the politics,” he said.
Nonkululeko Nyembezi, chair of the country’s largest bank, Standard Bank, said: “We will still be doing business with each other long after the Trump administration has departed.”
The ministerial meetings are designed to collate proposals, which will be fed through to the leaders of the G20 nations, who will meet in November in South Africa. It is unclear whether Trump will attend.
Additional reporting by Paola Tamma in Brussels, John Reed in New Delhi and Michael Pooler in São Paulo
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