The Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Osaka concluded Saturday with promises to work toward trade and investment that is free, fair, nondiscriminatory, transparent, predictable, stable and for open markets, even as they avoided a specific pledge to fight protectionism.
In addition, with the United States withdrawing from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, the best the G20 leaders could agree to on that front was that the other 19 members would pursue the Paris agreement’s goal of keeping the world’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, and that the United States would merely remain committed to the development and deployment of advanced technologies to continue to reduce emissions and provide for a cleaner environment.
“It is difficult to find a solution, in one stroke, regarding a variety of challenges. However, in this year’s summit, in many areas, we were able to send out the strong will of the members of the G20 to the whole world, creating a sustainable, future-oriented growth path,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a news conference following the declaration’s adoption.