source: reuters
G7 finance ministers gathering in Paris on Monday will try to find common ground on tackling global economic tensions and coordinating critical raw material supplies, even as geopolitical differences threaten to test the group’s cohesion.
The two-day meeting follows a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing that yielded few concrete economic breakthroughs, as tensions over Taiwan and trade simmered beneath a display of diplomatic cordiality.
At the core of the Paris agenda will be what French Finance Minister Roland Lescure described as deep-seated global economic imbalances that are fuelling trade friction and risk a turbulent unwinding in financial markets.
“The way the global economy has been developing for the past 10 years or so is clearly unsustainable,” he said, pointing to a pattern in which China under-consumes, the United States over-consumes and Europe under-invests.
