Podcast Transcript — Can the G7 Survive a Fragmented World?
The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) hosted a podcast in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation titled, “Can the G7 Survive a Fragmented World?”
The conversation examines the evolution and future of the Group of Seven (G7) as it marks roughly 50 years at the center of global economic governance. Peter Draper, Professor and Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide, explains that the group’s informal structure allows leaders to negotiate sensitive issues — such as climate policy, financial crises, and sanctions — away from public scrutiny, helping them manage domestic political constraints.
Draper is co-editor with Andreas Freytag of The Elgar Companion to the G7. He shares that the G7 now faces mounting pressures from geopolitical shifts, including the rise of China, the emergence of BRICS, and the broader expansion of forums like the Group of 20 (G20). Draper argues that internal political divisions, particularly the impact of populist movements and changes in US leadership, are weakening the consensus that once held the group together.
The podcast episode was hosted by Roseanne Gerin, an assistant editor at the newsletter Trade Strategies Today, who has worked in journalism for more than 25 years.
This podcast episode was produced in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode. The learning takeaways are available HERE.
Roseanne Gerin: Welcome to the Foreign Press Podcast, an educational program from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA, in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation, an Asia-based philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing mutually beneficial and sustainable global trade. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode. I'm Roseanne Gerin, an assistant editor at International Trade Today.
We're joined by Professor Peter Draper, Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He is the co-editor of The Elgar Companion to the G7, published in 2025. The interdisciplinary volume brings together leading experts to examine the G7's [Group of Seven] 50-year history, its policy evolution, its external relationships, and the challenges it faces in a more fragmented global order. Because it is an edited collection drawing on specialists across many fields, our conversation will focus on the broader themes and insights rather than the technical details of individual chapters.
And for anyone who needs a quick refresher, the G7 consists of seven advanced democracies: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Professor Draper, welcome to the program.
Peter Draper: Well, thanks very much, Roseanne, and thanks for hosting me today.
Roseanne Gerin: Sure. Let's start with the big picture and the motivations behind this volume. To begin, why was this the right moment to produce a 50-year companion to the G7? And what gap did you hope the book would fill?
Peter Draper
Peter Draper: Well, the G7 has been at the apex of global economic governance for nearly 50 years, or just over 50 years now. So it seemed like a suitable anniversary to celebrate in the first instance and to take stock of the G7's various achievements over the five decades of its operation and since its creation. And also our publisher, the Edward Elgar Group, were very keen to have a collection that focused on all of these dynamics. So we really wanted to put the G7 under the microscope from its creation, through its evolution, through the various policy debates and processes that it's had over the decades and assess the successes, the achievements, the failures, and now in the new context, the challenges to, dare we say, the next 50 years of the G7 — should there be a next 50 years — and I think we'll get to that towards the end.
Roseanne Gerin: The G7 is often described as an informal institution. From your perspective, what makes informality so central to how it operates and why it still matters?
Peter Draper: So the informality is interesting because there's a huge amount of process that undergirds the G7 summit, which is the heads of state getting together in their annual summit to discuss a range of matters. And before they get there, obviously a lot has been resolved, so there is a set of formal arrangements that take place in preparation for that informal summit. But the capstone is the leaders getting together and having a chat around the table, going for long walks through the gardens, or whatever host venue they are at in whichever host country. And it's in those informal conversations amongst leaders that all sorts of bargains can be struck because these are political leaders. They know how to make political bargains, and they know that often making those political bargains requires doing so away from the glare of the cameras, where you can really talk leader-to-leader about the constraints they're facing and the art of the possible in relation to those constraints. And that leads, so the theory goes, to the better construction of sometimes challenging bargains that the G7 leaders come up with. And all of that then is reflected in the final summit statement, which is largely pre-cooked before they get there. But sometimes those informal conversations can lead to substantive changes in the summit outcomes.
Roseanne Gerin: The introduction argues that many global challenges today are transboundary and difficult to govern formally. What makes the G7's informal trust-based model well-suited to dealing with those kinds of problems?
Peter Draper: Well, so as I indicated in my previous response, those transboundary issues, particularly thinking of environmental challenges and climate change, top of that agenda, they have very challenging domestic political economy framings. And so, it's very difficult sometimes for leaders to go to a summit and to announce that they're making this or that concession or this or that transboundary issue, knowing full well that the domestic political audience will not take this well, or that their counterparts’ domestic political audiences won't take this well. So what they can then construct in those informal settings is the kind of language, the kind of phrasing, the nuancing, how to sell these difficult political bargainings for their various domestic constituencies. So in that sense, they're playing two levels of a multi-level game. They're playing a domestic game. It's partly about their domestic audiences and taking them along with them, partly by showing them that, look, these other leaders are making these sacrifices as well. So it's not just us; we are in this together.
Roseanne Gerin: With that foundation in place, I'd like to step back and look at how the G7's origins continue to shape its behavior today. Several chapters revisit the G7's founding moment at Rambouillet in 1975. What lessons from that first summit still resonate today?
Peter Draper: I think the most obvious one, and I'll preface it by saying that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme, as some famous person once said. In the buildup to the Rambouillet summit in France, which was the original G5 [Group of Five], not the G7 — later it became the G7 — the backdrop to that was what the Japanese still call the “Nixon shocks,” when President Nixon broke the link between the US dollar and gold and instituted a 10% across-the-board tariff — sounds familiar. So that was in the context of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods currency arrangements and specifically the US leaving the gold standard, which had underpinned the global financial system for the 30 years prior to that, since the Second World War. But also, on top of that came a major oil shock, the first of at least two oil shocks in the 1970s that led to stagflation, which again rhymes with today's circumstances. So what the G5 came together to do was to manage the economic aftermath of those crises and talk about how best to govern them in shared ways to put a floor under the problems. And we're seeing echoes of this now, for example, in the G7's recent coordinated release of oil reserves in the context of the latest Gulf crisis and oil, gas, etc., shocks. So once again, the G7 is playing a role. It's an important role. It may not be a decisive role because the world has changed since then. And we'll get to that as well, I'm sure. But the role of China, for instance, Russia in the context of the current crisis and other major economic powers will also matter in our current context.
Roseanne Gerin: Russia's entry into what became the G8 in 1998 and its removal in 2014 shaped the group's identity. How did those decisions alter the G7’s sense of purpose?
Peter Draper: If anything, I think it reinforced to G7 leaders that their longstanding cooperation had been successful. The moment Russia joined the G7 was actually a moment of triumph for the G7. If you go back to the initial motivations behind the establishment of the G7, this was a grouping of like-minded Western leaders, all liberal Western democracies, coming together to buttress the liberal international economic order, the creation of which the United States had sponsored in the aftermath of the Second World War, but other allies had supported as well. And so for the 20-odd years prior to Russia acceding to the G7, the contest had been between this Western liberal international economic order and the Soviet bloc — the primary contest. And now, with Russia joining the G7, that contest was over, the West had won, Western liberal economic arrangements were the way of the future, and Russia and the communist bloc would be incorporated into those. And that was the G7's primary task in those first 10 years or so of Russia's membership was to incorporate the Soviet bloc — or the former Soviet bloc — into Western economic institutions. And then, of course, things got somewhere as President [Vladimir] Putin came to power in Russia and started to change the geopolitical calculus. And there's a very interesting chapter on Russia's participation in what became known briefly as the G8 and the kinds of Russian resentments that built up. So, for example, President Putin and his cabinet long felt that they were just appendages to a G7 conversation, that it didn't have any real influence on the G7's deliberations, and that contributed to broader Russian resentments, according to Natalya Volchkova, the author of that paper.
Roseanne Gerin: One contributor to the volume describes the G7 as being in a permanent state of structural transformation. Do you agree? What forces have driven that evolution?
Peter Draper: Yes, I think that is largely true, but within broad bands of historical times. So the period between 1975 to 1989 was largely a period of post-Bretton Woods, post-global oil crisis stagflation episode adjustment and management. And within that, managing the final phases of the competition with the Soviet bloc, I think the period roughly from 1990 up until Russia joins the G7 is one of consolidation and then ultimately expansion of Western liberal arrangements. And then with the Russia phase along comes the rise of China as well, the creation of the BRICS. Also, by the way, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the creation of initially the G20 [Group of 20] finance ministers. And then the next big punctuation mark is the 2007–2008 global financial crisis when the G20 heads-of-state process was initiated. So, yes, constant evolution in response to geopolitical developments, obviously the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of China, but also the rise of the rest, hence the creation of the G20, and punctuated by a series of different financial crises that had to be managed along the way. So constant flux almost, but within broad chunks of historical time that had some coherence, I would say.
Roseanne Gerin: Another contributor argues that right-wing populist governments, including in the US and Italy, have strained the G7's glue by challenging the Western-led order. How have these pressures affected the group's ability to present a united front?
Peter Draper: So going back to the informality of the G7 and the importance of those political conversations, any G7 leader facing a domestic populist problem is going to bring that into G7 deliberations. That's just obvious. For the most part — and I'll get to President [Donald] Trump and MAGA [Make American Great Again] shortly — those populist movements have been manageable, whether in Italy or in France. And certainly, in Italy, [Giorgia] Meloni's government has come to some extent, somewhat mainstream, certainly in terms of its international orientations and its postures toward Russia, where it's very much within the European consensus, at least as things currently stand. For me, the big outlier really is MAGA and President Trump, because what the G7 ultimately represented is everything that President Trump and MAGA loathe, which is globalism, the US commitment to maintain these institutions, to pay the costs of maintaining [them], and the many costs that involves, but also the underlying domestic political consensus, which is anathema to many on the right of the MAGA movement. So I think we have seen, with the re-ascension of President Trump and the MAGA movement, a real shift in the underlying normative foundations of the G7. So we've headed into uncharted territory. And this is why President Trump, certainly in the national security strategy released late last year, warned Europe about the enemy within. And so if you're a G7 leader that's European, and the United States is effectively telling you, you are the enemy within or you have this enemy within that has to be managed, and we are going to support your opposition. That's a big challenge to the cohesion of the group.
Roseanne Gerin: That brings us to the policy side of the story. The areas where the G7 has tried to coordinate, influence, or respond to global economic pressures, the book suggests that the G7's once strong consensus on open markets has weakened. How do you interpret the current state of transatlantic trade cooperation?
Peter Draper: Yeah, I think it's fair to say it's pretty grim. Whether we are talking about trade cooperation or military cooperation — and just look at the last ructions around the Gulf and the allies effectively refusing to send naval assets into the Gulf region to support a US war that they didn't support in the first place — so that's just a reflection of the broader state, I would say, of transatlantic cooperation. And I think certainly what I would hope President Trump and his allies within the administration are learning is that actually you do need to cooperate with allies, and you do need them on board. You can't just be telling them what to do by diktat. And if you look at the infamous Turnberry accord or agreement between the European Union and the Trump administration, it was really the US telling the Europeans, “Here's the price you're going to pay. We are not going to pay anything in return, and when we say jump, you ask how high.” Now, if you're an ally, and that's the deal that's presented to you, that's not going to make you very cooperative. So I think that underlying dynamic has not shifted, but we'll see what happens in the wake of this Iran imbroglio.
Roseanne Gerin: Debt relief has long been a core G7 issue. With China now a major creditor outside the Paris Club, how does its role complicate the G7's approach to managing sovereign debt?
Peter Draper: So historically, the G7 has played an important role in debt relief for Latin America and for Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, and that's been managed at the level of finance ministers and central bank governors, particularly through the finance track of the G7, and then through both the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank, and the very important vetoes — structural vetoes, effectively — that the G7 members have over those institutions through their share of ownerships, which have been largely intact since the Second World War — so a high degree of dominance over those institutions. China, of course, is a member of both institutions — the IMF and the World Bank — but decided some time ago that no matter the extent of China's economic rise, they would never be given a dominant role in these institutions and that the Europeans in particular would find it difficult to relinquish their privileges in those institutions.
So China has moved to create its own institutions, obviously, and it's rolled out its own development or quasi-development packages through the BRI, or the Belt and Road Initiative, particularly, but also through various bilateral arrangements. And there's a lot of skepticism about these Chinese arrangements. And we hear terms like debt trap diplomacy, for example, Sri Lanka — the famous Port of Hambantota is the most infamous example that's cited in this regard. So in that context, where you have on the one hand a G7 long-established process to manage debt relief through the IMF and the World Bank, but on the other hand, China has established all these parallel systems, institutions, and approaches, and offers sovereign debtor countries alternatives to these Western institutions. It probably puts the sovereign government that's at risk of default in more of a bargaining position to play off the West versus China. Now, I'm not an expert on Chinese debt restructurings and how those play out and are managed, but this goes to issues like, for instance, conditionalities that are imposed on IMF loans. But even there, we've seen since the Greek financial crisis, in particular in Europe, that the Western consensus on conditionalities has also shifted away from very rigid conditionalities toward more flexibility in debt resolution arrangements. So I think there's a lot of fluidity in how these processes are playing out at a political level, and given the competition between China and the West, conflict is baked into those debt resolution processes going forward, it seems to me.
Roseanne Gerin: The book also devotes considerable attention to how the G7 relates to the rest of the world, especially its major competitors and partners. The chapters on Russia and China highlight increasingly adversarial dynamics. How should we understand the G7's role in managing systemic rivalry with these two powers?
Peter Draper: Yes. So I think it's difficult to understand in the context of the current Trump administration because, as I indicated, I do think the Trump administration represents, to quote Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, a rupture of the old system and practices, etc. But certainly under the Biden administration, and when it came to Russia, the G7 was very effective in mobilizing a concerted sanctions campaign against Russia — and the G7 was right at the apex of that effort. And similarly, when it came to dealing with or managing China's rise, the G7, through a concerted US-Japanese approach in particular — and the Japanese understand, obviously, China extremely well — it came up with a series of statements that dealt with various aspects of managing, if you like, containing China's rise. So how to deal with the various elements of China’s state-capitalist model, particularly industrial subsidies, how should the G7 respond — there were statements on that, arrangements were put in place.
But I think under the current Trump administration, if you then go to Russia, there's a lot of uncertainty still about what the Trump administration thinks about Russia, how it wants to deal with Russia, the future of its sanctions on Russia, and particularly in the context of the current Gulf crisis. And so that old consensus that the Biden administration worked hard to build has largely, certainly frayed and might be broken when it comes to Russia. We're not sure. When it comes to China, we're all just waiting to see. We don't know how it's going to play out and how that former G7 consensus will be managed, and if indeed it will hold, because we all know that President Trump favors above all else bilateralism. And he has spoken about a G2 [Group of Two] in favorable terms, which I note that the Chinese have disparaged, very interestingly. And possibly we are heading into what Ian Bremmer, a famous US political scientist, calls a G-zero world. And in that context, is there still a G7? Will there still be a G7? It's a very important question, I think.
Roseanne Gerin: How does the G7 interact with other groupings like the G20 and BRICS? Do these forums complement the G7, compete with it, or constrain it?
Peter Draper: I think all of the above. So the G7 was instrumental, firstly, in the creation of the G20 heads-of-state process. That happened in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, in particular. And the first meeting of the G20 heads of state took place in London under Gordon Brown's stewardship — he was the then British prime minister — and that really marked a new phase in global economic governance. Now, within that process, the G7 was very influential, firstly, in initiating the grouping and calling it together; secondly, in caucusing people beforehand on key agenda items. And I think the G7, if it continues to function in the way that it previously did, could still play that caucus role, a coordination of agendas across the G7, and then taking those as individual G20 member states into the G20 context. The G20 also includes the BRICS. So the BRICS was initiated in response to the G7 and partly also to coordinate in the G20, but the BRICS is a much more disparate grouping. It doesn't have the same normative foundations of Western liberal democracies that the G7 has long shared, up until recently, I would argue. So the BRICS is defined largely in opposition to something, which is G7 dominance of global economic institutions, and it brings that to some extent into the G20. But individually, the BRICS aren't necessarily on board with that broad objective. They disagree on many important details, as there are disagreements in the G7. So this was all pretty fluid, I would suggest. But in that context, if you can, as the Biden administration had done, forge a coherent caucus group within the G20 context, it could be powerful. I just don't see the Trump administration doing that. And they've already excluded South Africa, obviously, from the G20 summit, and that's creating a lot of divisions. So one should question how effective that G20 summit process led by the United States will be.
Roseanne Gerin: So I'd like to ask you for your final thoughts on the G7. Perhaps you can address what you think the next decade holds for the G7 and what will ultimately determine whether it remains influential.
Peter Draper: I think the fundamental determinant of its degree of influence will be what happens in the United States in the first instance. Domestically, in the first instance, there are big question marks about the future of US democracy. Many political observers are concerned, I would say, about that. And the first test is coming soon, which is the midterms, but the real test, I think, will be the presidential elections, the next presidential elections. So that is a huge question mark, and the future of the MAGA project and how the US will orientate itself toward those institutions that it created since the Second World War, and then working with its G7 allies on how to sustain, deepen, and adapt to the new global context. I think there'll be other tests as well. So the next most important test, I think, will be in the French presidential elections that will take place in France, I think next year. And there looks like the Front National [National Rally], which is a fairly hard-right populist movement, may well win the presidency for the first time. And then we'll have to wait and see what happens. Then you would have two core G7 member states outside of the erstwhile consensus. So that does not necessarily bode well for the future of the G7 as a grouping. And I think this brings into the frame, again, Prime Minister Mark Carney's rupture speech, within which he then recommended that middle powers like Canada, like Australia — we care about these things; we’re also G20 members, by the way — so what is our role in stepping up to somehow collectively salvage what we can from the system. If there is still a G7 to work with, that would be first prize, and particularly if it's cohesive, but I have my doubts about that. If there isn't, then we are going to be confronted with a rising and rather belligerent, I would say, China. And who knows what'll happen in the aftermath of this Gulf war. And there are just so many question marks. Hence, rupture, I think, is the right term. It's a very uncertain world we are heading into, and it's very difficult to foresee how all of that plays out. I certainly don't have a crystal ball.
Roseanne Gerin: Before we wrap up, I want to bring this conversation back to the people who rely on this podcast for context and clarity — foreign correspondents working here in the United States. Based on your experience working with G7 governments and editing this volume, what guidance would you offer journalists covering US policy toward the G7, the G20, and global economic governance? What do they often overlook?
Peter Draper: Yes. So I think as I mentioned at the outset, all of these global governance arrangements where they bring … heads of state together — how is the US approaching its management of the G20 reviewed through a domestic political lens? So what is the Trump administration trying to portray domestically? I think that's an important question, and I certainly don't have the answer to that. I'm not based in the United States. That goes to preparation of key government agencies, key government officials. So what are they preparing, what positions do they want to take into that G20 process, can they achieve domestic political consensus on this, and then ultimately, what does the US want to do with the G20 is another big set of questions. And that goes to the US' international agenda under the Trump administration and what are its core objectives for the system because the G20, like the G7, is really about system management. But if you've set yourself up as a MAGA movement against the system, how are you purporting to lead the group of heads of state that are the key compass points in that system and bringing them all together in a — I'm not sure where a summit will take place, but let's say it's Washington — what are you going to be telling them? What's the agenda for that meeting? What do you want them to do? Will they even agree to it? And given that South Africa's been excluded, will they even come, is another question. And given, I would say, a relatively declining US influence over allies, that is a possibility for some of these G20 heads of state. So would it even be a successful G20 summit process? So I think there's lots of questions to be asked. It's a target-rich environment, if I were a journalist.
Roseanne Gerin: Professor Draper, thank you for sharing your insights into the G7’s evolution and the themes explored in this new companion volume. And to our audience, thanks for listening. I'm Roseanne Gerin, and this has been the Foreign Press Podcast brought to you by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA, in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode.
