Leaders from South Korea, India, Brazil, and South Africa will arrive at the gathering at a resort in the Canadian Rockies with Trump already gone.
Dozens of countries are locked in negotiations with Washington to clinch some sort of trade deal before the US imposes stinging reciprocal tariffs, threatened for Jul 9.
Mexico, whose president Claudia Sheinbaum was also expected, is meanwhile seeking to renegotiate its three-way North American free trade agreement that also includes Canada.
While there was little expectation that the summit would deliver a breakthrough in the trade negotiations between the US and the rest of the world, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was part of Trump’s delegation.
A source at the summit said that French President Emmanuel Macron urged the American leader to quickly end the trade conflict once and for all.
The European Commission handles trade negotiations for the 27-country bloc, and the EU’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic was also attending the summit, accompanying the delegation of EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
The EU institutions are official members of the G7, and during the morning session, von der Leyen argued to the leaders that “tariffs – no matter who sets them – are ultimately a tax paid by consumers and businesses at home.”
Von der Leyen also met with Trump one-on-one on trade issues in a sit-down that US officials said was at her request.
“We instructed the teams to accelerate their work to strike a good and fair deal. Let’s get it done,” she said in a post on X.
