For the second time this year, the world's most influential finance ministers are gathering in South Africa without the presence of the US Treasury Secretary, UNN reports with reference to Bloomberg.
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Scott Bessent will again miss this week's G20 meeting, continuing the boycott of South Africa by high-ranking US officials, initiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
South Africa is the first country from the continent to host a G20 summit. But its ambitions to use this to advance issues vital to developing countries are likely to be further sidelined as the club faces another salvo in US President Donald Trump's trade war.
"The problem around the G20 is that you just don't know what's going to come out of the White House," said Sanusha Naidu, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Global Dialogue in Pretoria. "There is an actor in the international system who plays such a disruptive role in the order of global international governance."
The most important forum for multilateral cooperation has been under attack since Trump's return to the White House, hindering progress on issues such as climate change and debt relief, which South Africa had hoped to advance.
According to the publication, this meeting, which will take place at the Zimbali resort on the Indian Ocean coast near the port city of Durban on the country's southeastern coast, will suffer the same fate.
Addendum
In addition to Trump's threat to impose devastating tariffs on key trading partners starting August 1, the US president has targeted the BRICS bloc of developing countries, which includes South Africa, threatening an additional 10% tariff for "anti-American" policies.
He also singled out Brazil, a member of both BRICS and the G-20, promising a 50% tariff for that country, criticizing its persecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro for attempting to overturn election results he lost.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was the first BRICS leader to speak out against Trump after a meeting in Rio de Janeiro last week, saying the American president needed to "better appreciate the emergence of different centers of power in the world."
This came weeks after he was criticized by Trump in a televised Oval Office meeting for false claims that his government was ignoring the genocide of the country's white farmers.
Ramaphosa is also still trying to persuade Trump to attend the G-20 leaders' summit in Johannesburg in November, where he is due to hand over the group's presidency to the US. The prospects of Trump helping to advance South Africa's G-20 priorities look slim.
"For many of the agenda items that have been developed over the last four or five years, next year is not fertile ground," said Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, chief executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, referring to climate finance and sustainable development.
Despite Washington's indifference, South Africa is sticking to its guns and will try to get all it can from the week-long meeting, which will be led by finance chiefs and central bank governors on Thursday and Friday.
"Africa's development must remain a focus this year and in the future," Ronald Lamola, South Africa's Minister of International Relations, said at a United Nations conference in Spain this month. "The world cannot stand by and watch as rising debt service costs displace development for a generation."
One consequence of the US skipping meetings is that it has pushed some members of the so-called Global South and traditional US allies closer together.
Shortly after Rubio's snub, the European Union stated that it supported South Africa's goals in the G-20 format. Two weeks later, the economic bloc, which had been at odds with Pretoria on a number of issues, held its first summit with the country since 2018.
Trump "will not make the G20 irrelevant," said Louw Nel, a senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa. "Countries are already starting to look beyond the Trump presidency and know that these multilateral institutions will outlast this administration."