Kananaskis, Alberta – President Donald Trump arrives in the Canadian Rockies this Sunday for the G7 summit, facing both a looming tariff deadline and a burgeoning Middle East crisis. However, despite his desire to ink new trade agreements and project American strength, he’s unlikely to leave the three-day gathering with any major breakthroughs.
Trump is eager to use the G7 as a platform to demonstrate progress on trade deals with key U.S. allies. The summit also takes on added significance following an Israeli attack on Iran that has sent oil prices soaring and injected fresh uncertainty into the global economy.
Low Expectations for Trade Pacts
Despite predictions from Trump officials that trade pacts were imminent after a deal with the U.K. last month, progress has been slow. Even early hopes for a deal with Japan before this week’s conference now seem unlikely, according to two sources close to the White House. With U.S. attention diverted by turmoil in the Middle East, Trump’s aides are tempering expectations for the summit’s output.
“Everybody just wants to survive,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, emphasizing the lack of appetite for significant deals.
A senior U.S. official, briefing reporters on Friday, offered few specific goals, stating only that Trump aims to “make progress” in areas like “making America’s trade relationships fair and reciprocal.”
This cautious outlook reflects the plodding pace of negotiations since April, when Trump’s pursuit of more favorable terms for the U.S. disrupted existing trade ties. European leaders, facing the prospect of punishing tariffs by early July, are projecting resolve.
Fractured Alliance and Diluted Outcomes
The reduced expectations also highlight how quickly Trump’s return to office has strained the once-close Western alliance. Where the G7 once presented a united front, most leaders now simply hope to avoid further conflict with Trump.
Consequently, the G7 countries have abandoned hopes of issuing a traditional joint statement, breaking decades of precedent due to wide disagreements with Trump on key issues. Instead, they plan to release a handful of “leaders’ statements” on specific areas of consensus. This move aims to prevent a repeat of the 2018 Canada summit, where Trump abruptly rejected the joint statement via an angry tweet from Air Force One.
Back then, negotiators had spent hours wrangling over a single word related to trade. But after an agreement was reached, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s criticism of U.S. tariffs infuriated Trump, causing him to withdraw support.
New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has sought to steer clear of conflict by focusing on multilateral meetings on topics like energy security and drug trafficking, emphasizing areas of common ground.
The White House, for its part, has shied away from grand promises. While officials caution that Trump could always broker a surprise agreement, there’s little expectation that the summit will yield more than commitments to continue discussions.
“Everyone’s in really different spots in their trade relationships,” noted one White House insider. “I would be shocked if they came out with anything like the U.K.-U.S. framework in that environment.”
Trump’s Agenda: Primacy and Pressure
Still, Trump and his aides view the G7 as a high-profile opportunity to reassert American primacy, even over its closest allies. Trump will likely seize any chance to demonstrate his administration’s strength on the world stage, even if only rhetorically, forcing the other G7 nations to decide when to cooperate and when to risk confrontation.
“A success on the U.S. side would be going to the summit and being seen as not being pushed around by other leaders,” said Caitlin Welsh, a former senior National Security Council official during Trump’s first term.
Trump may find ample opportunities to cultivate this image. Besides trade, his response to the Israeli attack on Iran will be closely watched for clues on potential U.S. involvement. He’s also likely to face pressure to impose sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine, a step he has publicly floated but remains reluctant to take. Trump recently expressed disappointment with both Russia’s resistance to peace talks and Ukraine, highlighting his diverging views from the rest of the G7’s steadfast support for Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, invited by Carney, has vowed to seek another meeting with Trump. However, even the prospect of a brief encounter has raised concerns within the G7 about the risk of their relationship souring again and jeopardizing U.S. support for Ukraine.
“The value is only in maintaining the status quo,” Daalder said of discussions with Trump on the topic.
For Trump, the trade disputes that have marked his early months in office are likely to dominate his three days in Canada. He’s expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings as his administration pushes forward various trade negotiations. Trump has also ratcheted up pressure on G7 allies, vowing a market-rattling return to steep tariffs on July 9 if agreements aren’t clinched in the coming weeks.
While quick victories are unlikely in an arena where negotiations often span years, allies both in the U.S. and abroad hope that simply being back at the center of global diplomacy, surrounded by leaders vying for his attention, will be enough for Trump to hold off on an even more severe trade war.
“He’s completely comfortable with an outcome that ends in tariffs,” one source close to the White House said. “But a lot of it depends on whether there’s progress being made, and if he feels the countries are serious.”
