President Barack Obama returned from Asia yesterday, and the headlines greeting him home are not kind. “Obama’s economic view is rejected on world stage,” reads The New York Times; “Obama, weakened after midterms, reveals limited leverage in failed S. Korea deal,” says The Washington Post; and ABC News declares, “President Obama Falls Short on G-20 Goals: Failure to Deliver on Key Trade Goals Reveals Limits of American Influence.” These headlines are only half-right: Yes, President Obama did fail to deliver on his agenda in Asia, but the culprit is not …
20 people with very different backgrounds are unlikely to reach consensus on anything substantial. To forge such a consensus requires leadership. This week’s G-20 meetings produced nothing of substance, which is no surprise because the United States did not lead. First, let’s dispense with the idea that America can’t lead. The American economy is more than one-third larger than the second- and third-largest, China’s and Japan’s, combined. The dollar is the world’s currency. When they get nervous, central bankers all over the globe buy U.S. Treasuries, no matter how low …
Although Canada’s taxpayers were forced to spend one billion dollars for security at the G-20 Summit in Toronto last weekend, more than 600 people were arrested after a roving bands of protesters shattered shop windows for blocks. At that point, as Mark Steyn points out, the “insecure dweebs of the Toronto police” started threatening law-abiding passers-by. Meanwhile, on substance the G-20 ended up being the flop many predicted. That didn’t stop President Obama, who talked on and on from the beginning of the confab through his wrap-up press conference trying …
The willingness of some in the media to accept even the most vapid of statements from international leaders as evidence of major policy change provides evidence daily that reporters, like the rest of us, can let their hopes get in the way of their judgment. A case in point is today’s editorial in the Washington Post by David Ignatius on the G-20 summit getting underway in Toronto. For Ignatius, President Obama’s recent letter to his G-20 counterparts, in which he called for restraint in easing government spending, fewer exports by …
A page on the Canadian Government’s G-20 Toronto Summit website promises payments to citizens “to mitigate adverse financial consequences” as a result of the meeting of world leaders June 26-27. Unfortunately, the adverse consequences being referred to are only those incurred as a result of the security precautions that shut down cities when the world’s power brokers come to town. Those economic costs can run into the millions, as the citizens of Pittsburgh found out when they hosted G-20 leaders last year. The real economic damage to fear, of course, …
In a June 5 communiqué, G-20 Finance Ministers collectively recognized that, recent events highlight the importance of sustainable public finances and the need for our countries to put in place credible, growth-friendly measures, to deliver fiscal sustainability, differentiated for and tailored to national circumstances. The words “differentiated for and tailored to national circumstances” are a welcome relief from the more typical “harmonization” (from the EU) or “balance” (from the U.S.) that often dominates G-20 conclusions. While cooperation can be a healthy thing, we need to remember that it is competition, …
Back in September, Heritage fellow James Roberts wrote of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh: In the past 10 months, the leaders of the G-8 and G-20 nations have met three times at elaborate and expensive summits to address the world’s financial woes. … Originally a Group of Six–France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States–with Canada added in 1977, the G-7 process attempted to deal with the OPEC oil shock-induced economic crises of the 1970s as well as the need to re-design the post-World War II Bretton …
The Obama Administration made a bombshell revelation on the eve of the G-20 summit about Iran’s continued lying about its nuclear program. Anonymous “American officials” disclosed to the New York Times that U.S. intelligence agencies had uncovered another secret Iranian nuclear facility that Iran had failed to divulge to the International Atomic Energy Agency as required under its nuclear safeguard commitments. The secret facility reportedly is a uranium enrichment plant capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges that is built inside a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran near the city …
Heritage’s Nile Gardiner reacts to Iran’s admission that they have built a second uranium enrichment facility. Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTay-C1kXM[/youtube]
Pittsburgh is famous for its Three Rivers. The city was founded in 1758 at the militarily and commercially strategic point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers converge to form the might Ohio. It is somewhat ironic, then, that as the G-20 leaders arrive in Pittsburgh this evening for a sumptuous dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Obama amidst exotic flora and fauna at the Victorian-era, glass-walled Phipps Conservatory, they bring with them three major proposals for discussion. President Obama wants to impose upon China (and Americans) his “Framework for Sustainable …
