The Québécois police have been erecting high steel fences this week, braced for the demonstrators who normally flock to G7 summits to rail against the leaders of the global liberal order behind the security perimeter.
The difference this year is that one of those leaders will be railing from the inside.
Donald Trump has let it be known he is coming to this year’s summit of the world’s rich liberal democracies spoiling for a fight, and he does not mind wrecking established practice and old alliances if it plays well among his supporters.
This year’s conclave, opening on Friday, is being referred to as the G6 plus one, or the G7 minus one. It promises to be a showdown between the US president and everyone else.
Usually by this point the sherpas, diplomats who prepare for the summit, are working on the punctuation in the final communique. This time no one knows whether there is enough common language to put together any kind of joint statement by the meeting’s end on Saturday.
The Canadian host, Justin Trudeau, is seeking to make common cause with leaders from Europe and Japan against Trump’s “America First” unilateralism – in particular, his use of tariffs against traditional trading partners under the pretext that their exports represent a security threat to the US.
Trump’s reference to the 1814 burning of the White House, in a phone call with the Canadian prime minister, to justify steel and aluminium tariffs two centuries later suggests that facts are unlikely to play a significant role in the looming row (the British were the actual arsonists) and that the US president is seeking to stoke the row rather than defuse it.
Trudeau, like his European colleagues Theresa May, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, are stymied.
On the one hand, public opinion at home demands they stand up to Trump’s bullying. The imposition of tariffs is just the latest in a series of blows: Trump has already walked out of the Paris climate accord and abrogated the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, imposing sanctions on any European company that continues to do business with Tehran. He has also broken with US allies in recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
On the other hand, the Europeans, Canadians and Japanese cannot afford an escalation that turns into a full-blown trade war with a nation that accounts for more than half of the G7’s combined GDP.
“They have little choice than to respond, but at the same time they are shooting themselves in the foot,” said Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. “Everyone loses from this except China and Russia.”
It is far from clear Trump will stay for the full two days of the summit, as he will be off to play a starring role in a historic encounter in Singapore with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Before he goes, the US president will hold bilateral meetings with Macron and Trudeau, but there are no plans for him to meet Merkel or May.
The summit will be a particularly sharp test for Trudeau. He has sought to promote a progressive agenda focusing on gender equality, and the health of the world’s oceans, but all that is likely to be swamped by the fight over trade.
It will be Trump’s first visit to Canada since he became president and comes as the uncertainty looming over the renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement has taken a toll on business investment in Canada.
The US tariffs – described earlier this week by Trudeau as “insulting” – are expected to inflict further damage as Canada is the world’s top supplier of American steel.
Trump is steadfastly disliked by most Canadians; in a recent poll many described the US president as corrupt, arrogant and a liar. In the same poll around 40% of respondents described Trudeau as charismatic, but nearly a third saw him as weak – suggesting they want to see him take a tougher line with Trump.
On Wednesday, Trudeau said he was preparing for heated exchanges at the summit. “We know there will certainly be frank and at times difficult conversations around the G7 table,” he told reporters. “Particularly with the American president on trade, on tariffs.”
The last serious discord among the G7 was over George W Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the rift this time is sharper and broader. Even the UK is not siding with Washington. Trump is challenging the norms of western cohesion and rules-based trade that have been in place since the aftermath of the second world war.
“That is now what feels at stake. And that’s what is different,” Heather Conley, the director of the Europe programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said.
“This is a transition moving away from the 70-year-old system ... and we’re just moving to a new system. We just haven’t defined what that new system and who will lead it and the rules that will be.”
