Trump’s G-20 at his Miami golf resort will be an invite-only event

This became clear after the US President said in a social media post on Wednesday that he would not invite South Africa, which holds this year’s G20 presidency and has been irritating the US President for some time.

It would be a violation of established protocol for a leader to decide which members of the bloc can attend the summit – let alone host the event at his own hotel – but Trump has shown he cares little about the agreement or the multilateral system.

Now questions are starting to pile up about who will go and who won’t, not least which country might make up the numbers. The move puts other G20 members in a dilemma: either ignore the insult and make the trip anyway, or stand in solidarity and risk the full force of Trump’s response in trade tariffs, technology bans, or worse.

“This is one of the most important multilateral forums we still have in the world,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Berlin on Thursday when asked about Trump’s comments, a format that “we should not unnecessarily diminish.”

By boycotting last weekend’s summit in Johannesburg, Merz said, “the U.S. government has unnecessarily ceded its influence, including in a part of the world that has become increasingly important.”

South Africa was preparing to be barred from the summit at Trump National Doral Golf Club, and officials there remain concerned that the United States may seek to remove the country entirely from the group. However, any change in membership requires consensus among G20 countries, as was the case before the 2023 summit in India, when the African Union was accepted as a full member.

The US President’s anger ends a dispute with President Cyril Ramaphosa sparked by Trump’s repeated claims, without evidence, that South Africa is committing genocide against white Africans. Ramaphosa tried to persuade Trump to stop pushing the conspiracy theory during a visit to the White House in May, and was instead ambushed with a video montage amplifying the claims.

Dealing with Africa’s largest industrial economy, and the first African country to host the G20, highlights the president’s tendency to use the cudgel of the United States’ global position to achieve domestic political goals.

A statement from Ramaphosa’s office said South Africa “does not appreciate insults from another country about its value in participating in global platforms” and described Trump’s comments as “unfortunate”.

They may also be harmful, Mears noted. By further undermining Washington’s standing with countries of the so-called Global South, the risks lie in playing into the hands of China and Russia, members of the BRICS forum that Trump has condemned as anti-American.

C said. “This bullying of major non-Western countries makes it easier for China and Russia to win broader support in the global South,” said Raja Mohan, distinguished professor at the Institute of American Studies at Kendall University in Delhi. “There is no indication that Trump is keen to regain his leadership position in the Global South.”

It is not clear how the United States could enforce Trump’s ban on the participation of South Africa or any other country, although it is assumed that the State Department will not issue visas to officials seeking to attend.

Regardless, his rhetoric fits into a larger vision of reshaping the global order as he sees fit, selecting club members with little regard for other governments.

Just last week, the United States offered the possibility of inviting Russia back to reconstitute the old G8 as part of a 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine, surprising Kiev and its allies. The G8 became the G7 in 2014 after Russia was expelled over its illegal annexation of Crimea.

Another country that may benefit from Trump’s generosity is Poland, which has long demanded to join the G20. Trump in September invited Poland’s new right-wing nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, to a Miami summit in an unspecified capacity, heaping praise on the relative political novice and former amateur boxer who he supported in the election.

Poland saw the size of its economy exceed $1 trillion this year, and has repeatedly won Washington’s praise for spending heavily on defense, especially to purchase American weapons. Nawrocki’s credentials are further bolstered by seeing Poland’s security and future dependent on stronger ties with Trump’s America rather than Brussels, in contrast to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council president and a long-time critic of Trump.

“Poland was great, and the guy who won the election was great,” Trump told conservative TV channel GB News this month.

Whoever gets the nod for Trump’s Miami summit, his display of disdain for close partners likely portends what will be a “combative and uncooperative posture” during the US presidency, said Zyanda Sturman, a Cape Town-based geopolitical risk analyst and consultant at Africa Practice.

Sturman sees the United States using its chair to tear down the work of previous presidencies on issues such as climate, health and equality. She said Trump’s G20 events “are unlikely to be framed or conducted as meetings between equals, but rather as a platform to showcase what the United States believes is the group’s limited utility for achieving its own goals.”

At worst, they may see the multilateral world ignored entirely in favor of a world in which Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping set the agenda, said Bill Emmott, author of The Fate of the West. Trump is scheduled to visit China and meet Xi in April during his presidency of the G20.

To some, Emmott said, Trump’s America appears like a nightmarish vision of a “coercive ex-partner we cannot live without.” “But our biggest nightmare will be if he turns out to prefer a G-B world, a world in which the United States and China, far from fighting each other, decide to divide the world between them.”