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Trump withdraws US endorsement of G7 communique

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US President Donald Trump has withdrawn his country’s endorsement of the G7 communique after accusing host and Canada’s Prime Minister of making false statements at a press conference at the conclusion of the event.

Trudeau tried his best to downplay rifts between G6 countries and the United States over trade tariffs when announcing that all G7 countries had signed onto a joint-communiqué at the conclusion of the G7 summit.

Trudeau said he found the US move to impose tariffs “insulting” and that he would continue to stand up for Canada’s interests, eliciting Trump’s tweet backing out of the consensus agreement while flying to Singapore for a summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jon UN.

Trudeau says: “It would be with regret, but it would be with absolute certainty and firmness that we move forward with retaliatory measures on July 1 applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us. I have made it very clear to the President that this is not something we relish doing, but it is something that we absolutely will do. As Canadians, we’re polite and we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”

After meeting with leaders of the developing world including South Africa over issues of climate change and protecting the world’s oceans, he announced $100 million in new funding to help build resilient coastlines while five of the G7 countries agreed to new ambitious goals to rid the oceans of plastics.

“In the run-up to this summit there was a tremendous spate of speculation by a broad range of people that this summit was going to be replete with conflicts and not lead to much. But on the contrary, not only did we come out with a consensus document supported by all G7 nations, not only did we move forward on significant commitments on a broad range of issues that matter to Canadians, to citizens of the G7, to people around the world, we actually delivered almost $4 billion for women and girls in crisis and conflict affected areas to help with their education, to help their security.”

On the sidelines, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa held bilateral talks with a number of leaders, among them French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel amidst growing fears of rising protectionism from the United States. Trudeau struggled to downplay those disagreements.

“If the expectation was that a weekend in beautiful Charlevoix surrounded by all sorts of lovely people was going to transform the President’s outlook on trade and the world, then we didn’t quite perhaps meet that bar. If the bar was – can the world come together and make significant investments in things that matter to people, whether it’s women and girls education, whether its moving forward with real measures and real commitments to protecting our oceans, to including women in the growth that we need in our communities and our societies, to moving forward in an agreed upon way on a broad range of things then absolutely we’ve done that,” says Trudeau.

President Ramaphosa will address the summit outcomes live on SABCNews ahead of his departure to South Africa on Sunday evening.

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