Chinese President Xi Jinping, the chair of this year’s meeting, hailed the outcome of the two-day summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, saying the event “achieved fruitful results”, as the leaders displayed solidarity for closer coordination of macroeconomic policies. As the world’s two largest economies, China and the United States together account for 39 percent of global emissions.
Advertisement
All major steelmaking economies need to participate in the proposed Global Forum on steel excess capacity, they said.
In his concluding remarks, President Xi Jinping said summit participants reached “important consensus” on such G20 tasks as strengthening policy coordination, breaking a new path for growth, achieving more efficient and effective global economic and financial governance, boosting worldwide trade and investment and enhancing anti-graft efforts.
“We have had some productive conversations about what a real cessation of hostilities would look like”, US President Barack Obama said after meeting his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who supports protectionist trade policies, has pulled into an effective tie with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, erasing a substantial deficit.
Red carpet fracasA squabble over a mobile stairway caused President Barack Obama to disembark from the belly of Air Force One on a small flight of metal stairs, and not onto the red carpet normally provided to world leaders. “But I nevertheless believe the decisions made were right and we have to continue to work on them”.
China facilitated the G20’s transition “from a crisis-management mechanism to one focused on long-term governance aimed at orienting global economic growth and worldwide economic cooperation”, the experts told Xinhua in an interview.
The summit ended on Monday amid concerns about the health of the global economy and acknowledgment by the G20 delegates that markets were undergoing continued shifts and significant change in the dynamics for growth.
To this end, the members of the G20 pledged to make full use of all monetary, fiscal, and structural tools to reach the target of strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth.
“Despite hopes that the US and Russian Federation would come to an agreement on ending violence in Syria, Obama said the two sides failed reach a consensus due to “‘gaps of trust’ between the two governments”, CNN reports.
The International Monetary Fund has cut its outlook for global economic growth to 3.1 percent.
In June more than 200 civil society organizations called on the G20 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies by 2020, while insurers managing $1.2 trillion followed suit last month.
Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and a former U.S. State Department climate adviser, said before the summit that the United States was seeking a 2021 phase-out deadline for the G20, but India appeared to favor 2031.
It got off to a rocky start Saturday when there was no staircase at the airport for Obama’s plane.
Advertisement
“But it is worth trying”, Obama went on. Notwithstanding Mr. Obama’s disappearing dream of securing full global support for the Paris Agreement before his second term ends, a symbolic show of solidarity towards this goal in the form of the US and China ratifying the Agreement last week failed to produce any dramatic commitments in Hangzhou.
