President Donald Trump is set to head to France for the annual summit of the Group of Seven nations, with the U.S. and Iran yet to finalize an anticipated deal to end the Middle East war that has stirred political and economic strife around the world.
The three-day G7 summit, which starts Monday, is taking place in Évian-les-Bains, on France’s eastern border with Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Trump said he will depart for the summit “immediately” after attending a mixed-martial arts fight that is set to take place Sunday evening on the White House’s South Lawn. The UFC match coincides with Trump’s 80th birthday.
As France began its turn leading the G7 in January, President Emmanuel Macron expressed a desire for the group to prioritize reducing inequality and fostering multilateralism while addressing inflamed trade and geopolitical tensions. Those priorities may be counter to Trump’s America First agenda, under which he’s imposed tariffs, gone after other world leaders directly and on social media and started a war. And inequality in the U.S. is worse than in every European country except for Turkey and just short of its highest point ever, according to the World Bank’s Gini index.
During his second term in the White House, even more than in his first, Trump has distanced himself from traditional U.S. allies and repeatedly flirted with pulling the U.S. out of NATO, the key defense alliance between the U.S. and Europe.
While a deal to end the Iran war is drawing much of the world’s focus, the G7 leaders are also likely to spend time addressing Russia’s war against Ukraine, which continues to rage in eastern Europe.
The seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. — and the European Union are also expected to discuss issues related to artificial intelligence, online protections and the fight against organized crime.
There could be “real fireworks” on AI, said Victor Cha, president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Europe is eager to rein in Big Tech and regulate AI leaders on energy and environmental grounds, while the U.S. under Trump has opposed aggressively regulating the nascent industry, Cha said.
But Macron, who has been courting tech leaders, invited OpenAI chief Sam Altman to attend the G7 and participate in talks with the leaders, the tech company told CNBC. Bloomberg reported that executives from Anthropic and Google are also slated to attend the conference.
Cha anticipated that Trump is likely to be greeted at the summit by a group of other world leaders who are trying to rein in the U.S. itself.
“Even under good conditions, Trump is walking into a G7 where the Europeans, they’ve not appreciated the way that Trump has talked about Europe,” he said. “With all these other issues on the agenda, I’m sure it’s going to be a very frank and candid and fiery conversation.”
But the summit has the potential to be overshadowed by the Iran war, which Trump started in February and which he has repeatedly said is near an end.
A senior Trump administration official told reporters Friday that such a deal could be signed in just a few days. But “it’s not 100%” certain that it will work out, the official added.
Trump on Saturday said that a deal to end the war with Iran will be signed on Sunday, followed by the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, but Iranian state media disputed the timing.
The two sides have not yet determined where a deal would be signed, though the official noted a location in Europe has been floated. Bloomberg had reported earlier Friday that a deal could be signed in Switzerland.