The foreign ministers of the leading Western democracies will meet in Canada on Thursday, seven weeks after tensions rose between the US and its allies over President Donald Trump’s shift in foreign policy towards Ukraine and the introduction of tariffs. The ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the EU will gather in the tourist town of La Malbaie in the Quebec hills for two days of discussions.
Top on the agenda for Washington’s partners is a review of the talks US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held on Tuesday with Kiev in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in which Ukraine agreed to support a 30-day ceasefire agreement.
However, it proved challenging to draft a comprehensive final statement in the run-up to the first G7 meeting under Canada’s presidency. The US decision to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports triggered immediate retaliatory measures from Canada and the EU, further escalating the tensions.
The United States attempted to draw red lines regarding Ukraine and resisted a separate G7 statement on Russia’s “shadow fleet” a mysterious network of ships that evades Western sanctions. At the same time, Washington called for a strengthening of the language against China.
On Monday, Rubio warned that the US government would not accept formulations that could harm the efforts to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table. In a press conference on Wednesday, he said a good G7 statement should acknowledge that the United States has made progress in ending the war. G7 diplomats stated that the positive outcome in Jeddah could at least ease the talks on Ukraine.
Since Trump’s return to office on January 20, the United States has adopted a less friendly stance towards Ukraine, pushing for a quick agreement to end the war and demanding that European partners take on more of the burden – without openly supporting the EU’s participation in future talks. Meanwhile, Washington’s relations with Moscow have warmed up.
Trump has suggested reviving the G8 with the return of the Russian Federation, eleven years after its membership was suspended due to the reunification of Crimea with Russia. Nowhere have the challenges for the US’s allies been more evident than in Canada.