Gee, how I wish I were a G-man

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AUGUST 27, 2019

President Donald Trump speaks at a press conference at the close of the G7 Summit in France on Aug. 26.Erin Schaff/The New York Times

By Paul Krugman

Before last weekend's G7 meeting in France, I predicted that Donald Trump would have a meltdown. He is, after all, a man who lives for dominance displays, for "winning" and humiliating others. Yet the G7 is, formally at least, a meeting of equals, who are supposed to discuss common action on shared goals, offering nothing at all for the Trumpian ego.

Sure enough, Trump's behavior was bizarre. Aside from his whipsawing pronouncements on trade policy — I'm gonna punish China! But maybe not! But actually yes! But they've asked for a deal! — he seemed to simply invent a reality in which other leaders were giving him the obeisance he sees as his due. "World Leaders," he tweeted, were asking "Why does the American media hate your Country so much?"

But why do we have such meetings anyway? What are the Gees — the G7 and its newer counterpart, the G20 (which includes big developing economies, and is arguably more important these days) — all about? And does it matter that this one was a fiasco?

The truth is that I have mixed feelings about the whole Gee idea. These summit meetings are ponderous and pretentious. The real work of international diplomacy is carried out by lower-level officials who actually know what they're talking about. The end result of a G7 or G20 is, at best, a communique that basically ratifies what the professionals had already worked out, and a lot of skilled human capital has to be used to manage this formal ratification. On the other hand, pageantry can serve a purpose, giving sensible policies a level of prestige and perhaps effectiveness that a mere staff understanding can't achieve.

The first Gee — actually a G6 — took place in 1975, at a time of global crisis, although the form of crisis (soaring inflation and currency instability) was very different from what we've seen since. Still, the idea was that by getting leaders of the world's most important economies together, nations would be able to cooperate in solving or at least mitigating common problems. At the very least, they might be able to agree not to take actions that tried to achieve gains at other countries' expense.

In practice, opportunities for that kind of economic cooperation have been fairly rare. The 1985 Plaza Accord — strictly speaking an agreement of five finance ministers, rather than a G7 summit, but generally considered part of that process — probably helped bring down an overvalued dollar, which was disrupting world trade.

And in 2009, in the face of global financial crisis, the larger G20 group met in London and hammered out an agreement that may have actually mattered. Countries agreed to provide "liquidity" (that is, keep money flowing so that nobody ran out of dollars or euros); to avoid protectionist trade policies; and to provide fiscal stimulus via spending increases and tax cuts. All of this probably did help mitigate the crisis.

But if such productive Gees are few and far between, why hold summits every year? One answer is that there are other areas, not strictly economic, where cooperation can be important: climate change is the most obvious example, but issues like global tax evasion matter too. Beyond that, supporters of the Gees argue that regular meetings of top leaders both take these leaders out of their comfort zones, the circle of subordinates who tell them what they want to hear, and help create a basis of trust and understanding that makes it easier to take collective action when it really is needed.

So basically the Gee process is a good idea, and with normal leaders — people like Barack Obama, or even George Bush — it helps make the world a somewhat better place.

But when world leaders include people like Donald Trump, I'm not so sure. All the evidence suggests that taking him out of his comfort zone doesn't open his mind, it just provokes a temper tantrum. Whatever this G7 did, it didn't create trust and confidence.

Still, I guess we need to maintain the process. One of these days we may again have a president for whom it does some good.

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