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Amid trade tumult, Argentina wants G20 to find path forward
WASHINGTON, Nov 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – With international tensions on trade
set to come to a head at the Group of 20 summit, host Argentina is hoping to
find agreement on improving global stability, even if deep disagreements
remain.
In an interview with AFP, Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie said the November
30-December 1 meeting in Buenos Aires should stress the importance of trade
itself, at a time that the former consensus against protectionism breaks
down.
“We are putting a focus on the situation of trade, just to make sure that
it grows, that it is stable and that this vision is shared by the principal
actors,” he said by telephone.
“We have to encompass all the views to be able to find common ground for
everyone,” he said.
The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have an
escalating trade war as US President Donald Trump vows to protect domestic
industry as part of his “America First” philosophy.
Trump has cast his G20 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping as a
deadline for Beijing to lessen trade barriers or face even more intense
pressure.
The Group of 20, a club formed a decade ago amid the economic crisis,
accounts for 85 percent of global economic output. Faurie played down the
importance of any final statement, quipping: “Sometimes we do such lengthy
documents that people are a little bit lost in their reading.”
But he said a draft proposal by Argentina, which was still being hammered
out, was “reasonable” and would emphasize stability as part of a “rational
and positive outlook” on trade.
Two other major summits this year, of the Group of Seven industrialized
democracies and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, both ended
without customary joint statements.
– Host under economic pressure –
Faurie said Argentina, an emerging economy and the first South American
host of the G20, was in a position to offer a “fresh approach” to world
leaders.
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Argentina is leading the G20 as its center-right president, Mauricio
Macri, presses ahead with spending cuts as part of a $56 billion
International Monetary Fund bailout. The peso has lost nearly half of its
value this year as Argentina copes with a yawning fiscal deficit and the
effects of a severe drought.
Faurie said the structural reforms, which have triggered boisterous street
protests in Argentina, have gone in tandem with the G20 push for trade, which
could help fill the coffers for emerging economies.
“It is very important for us to have a sort of stabilization of trade,
because we depend on this possibility of trade to have more production and to
have more … employment,” he said.
– Milestone with Britain –
The G20 will be historic in marking symbolic reconciliation between
Argentina and Britain, which went to war in 1982 over British-ruled islands
in the South Atlantic known as the Falklands to Britain and the Malvinas to
Argentina.
In attending the summit, Theresa May will be the first sitting British
prime minister to visit Buenos Aires since the war. Tony Blair briefly
visited Argentina in 2001 when he crossed the Brazilian border at magnificent
Iguacu Falls.
Faurie said Argentina was committed to working more closely with Britain
from trade to environmental preservation to better connecting Argentina to
the islands, whose nearly 3,000 people are culturally linked to Britain.
“We are trying to show that, besides the discussion of sovereignty over
the Malvinas, we have a lot of other areas in bilateral relations and that we
have to make them grow,” he said.
As for addressing the sovereignty of the islands — which Britain refuses
to negotiate — Faurie said, “You have to be very patient.”
Argentina is leading the summit just as the other two Latin American
members of the G20, Brazil and Mexico, go through presidential transitions in
which the countries are shifting sharply to the right and left respectively.
Faurie quickly dismissed any suggestion that the G20 was a bid by
Argentina for Latin America’s helm. He said he collaborated closely with
Brazil and Mexico on pursuing the agenda and noted that Argentina invited
neighboring Chile to the summit.
“It is not a matter of leadership; it is a matter of doing the right thing
at this moment.”
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