Top finance ministers snub G20 as global co-op comes under strain

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 cooperation is faltering, Report informs via Financial Times.

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 organization 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 cooperation 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 the 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 would 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 coordinate the response to the global financial crisis.