CCTV Script 21/08/19
— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on August 21, 2019, Wednesday.
G7 summing is coming on this weekend, Trump, who is on his way to France to attend this meeting, prepares a special "gift" to the host that is more tariffs threat. Trump said in the press conference that it is hard to deal with EU, but the US can beat it easily.
And it is simple to do that, just imposing more tariffs.
Donald Trump
US PRESIDENT
We have all the cards in this country because all we have to do is tax their cars and they'd give us anything we wanted because they send millions of Mercedes over, they send millions of BMWs over.
This speech cast a shadow over the coming summit. Trade problems are not covered in this G7 Summit, but it would definitely become a pressure point. The latest threaten from Trump makes EU more worried. Foreign presses pointed out that EU has been accused by Trump many times, either on security problems or on trade problems. Before this summit, many conflicts are still unsolved.
Currently, the US is carrying on an investigation of France digital tax which targeting Google and Facebook, and that may clear the road for imposing tit-for-tat imports tariffs. Meanwhile, US hopes to enter EU agriculture market, but France maybe not happy with that. Imposing tariffs over imported autos may hit Germany economy which is on border of recession.
Germany and France, who are not in line with trade policy, will they joint together to fight back the US? This problem would be a spotlight. Trump had a phone call with Boris Johnson, who just takes office as UK PM, and they will have their first meet in this summit, focus of their discussion would be trade issues.
Trump said, he is negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Boris Johnson, which will bring some uncertainties to relationship between US and EU.
France President Macron set the topic of this meeting as eliminating inequality, but some more urgent issues faced by many countries would be an obstacle of reaching a great goal.
Apart from the uncertainty of Brexit, Italy Prime minister's resignation also set off a political turmoil in the country. The confrontation between Japan and South Korea is also growing.
A Japanese official who is familiar with this case said on Tuesday that they may not release a joint statement after this meeting, because of a diversion in trade issues, according to Reuters and some Japan presses. If that happens, then it would be the first exceptional case since G7 summit held in 1975 and that reflects directly that Trump's trade policy "America First", creating divisions within the G7. We know that G7 held last year ended up with "farce", if this year's summit could be a "decent" one, we will keep an eye on this issue.