Washington: US President Donald Trump confirmed he will not attend the G20 leaders’ summit in South Africa in November, removing another opportunity for him to encounter Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and adding pressure for them to meet this month in the US.
Trump indicated six weeks ago that he might skip the meeting in Johannesburg because he had “a lot of problems with South Africa”, having taken issue with its land policies, actions against Israel and what he claimed, without evidence, was a genocide of white farmers.
US President Donald Trump has ruled out attending the G20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg.Credit: Bloomberg
On Friday, US time, he confirmed he would not attend and would send Vice President JD Vance instead. “It’s in South Africa, I won’t be going – JD will be going, great vice president, and he looks forward to it,” Trump said.
He announced the US would host next year’s G20 summit in Miami, in the fast-growing state of Florida, and said new Polish President Karol Nawrocki, whom he met at the White House during the week, had already been invited as a guest.
Trump also entertained the idea of inviting Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20. “I haven’t thought of that, that’s an interesting question. I’m going to think about that for a little while,” he said.
Albanese had identified the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in New York, along with other global meetings in the end-of-year “summit season”, as potential locations for a face-to-face meeting with Trump.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“I’ll be certainly with President Trump a number of times between now and the end of the year,” Albanese told Channel Nine’s Today late last month. “It’s summit season … so we’ll be running into each other regularly.”
That included the Quad leaders’ meeting – a group containing Australia, the US, India and Japan – due to take place later this year in India. However, relations between the US and India have also soured in recent months, and The New York Times reported last week that Trump no longer planned to attend the Quad summit, citing sources familiar with his schedule.
