Absa macro and fixed-income research head Jeff Gable thinks it is “ridiculous” that discussions are abounding about whether or not the US will boycott the 2025 G20 Summit later this year or not, noting that this should not detract from the summit’s goals.
“It’s ridiculous that we’re having this discussion. But this is where we are. Hopefully, on the back channels, there’s a huge amount of work ensuring the US participates and participates at the very highest level,” he said on June 4.
Gable was speaking at the 2025 S&P Global Ratings’ South Africa Conference, in Johannesburg, where he told fellow panel members that if US President Donald Trump were to fail to attend the G20 Summit in November, which is being hosted in South Africa, it would dominate global headlines and detract from the progress being made by diplomats and politicians during the event.
“What is going to be paragraph one, two and three of every global story on this? It’s going to be nothing about solidarity, sustainability and inequality. It’s going to be nothing about all the things that the huge number of working groups are engaged in every single week, all year. This year, the headline is only going to be about [the US being absent]. And so that’s very frustrating,” he said.
In April, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “How could we be expected to go to SA for the very important G20 meeting when land confiscation and genocide are the primary topics of conversation? They are taking the land of white farmers, and then killing them and their families. The media refuses to report on this. The US has held back all contributions to SA. Is this where we want to be for the G20? I don’t think so”.
However, during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House in May, Trump said it was crucial that the US remain part of both the G20 and the G7.
“Without the US, I really believe it’s not very important. It’s not the same meaning,” he said. However, Trump remained ambiguous and did not publicly commit to attending.
Nonetheless, Ramaphosa claimed that Trump had committed to attending, supposedly behind closed doors. No such announcement has been forthcoming from the Trump administration.
Gable said the distraction posed by the potential US boycott should not derail the work that lay ahead for South African politicians, which would involve not only making headway in G20 discussions but also displaying a well-run country under the scrutiny of the world’s media.
“We need to manage two things here. In this period, where our official policymakers and heads of business are all engaging on this G20 and B20 stuff, we need to make sure that we actually run our day-to-day things correctly. Then you add on all these meetings. You’ve got to manage that, and then you’ve still got to make sure that the headline from this G20 isn’t the US boycotting it,” he said.
“I think it’s crucial, because it’s now the first time for a long time that [the G20] will be within the emerging market space. We’ve heard all the challenges related to things like debt sustainability, equity, sustainability and green energy financing – crucial issues that need to be resolved during these G20 discussions to take the continent further.
“So it would be great if the US could attend,” Deutsche Bank director and senior economist Danelee Masiaadded.
