The Group of Seven’s annual summit produced one thing its organizers weren’t sure they might ship: a joint assertion through which all seven governments, together with Washington, declared unified help for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and dedicated to tightening sanctions on Russia — a consequence that may have appeared inconceivable as lately because the weeks earlier than leaders gathered on the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains.
The unanimity didn’t arrive simply. Trump’s administration has resisted coordinated G7 positioning on Ukraine at a number of factors since January, significantly on the query of how a struggle now grinding into its fifth yr ought to finish and on whose phrases.
What shifted the ambiance at Evian was a bilateral assembly Tuesday between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Trump described as superb — language that, measured towards his prior public ambivalence towards Kyiv, registered as one thing approaching an endorsement. Zelenskiy stated afterward {that a} follow-up assembly with Trump was potential earlier than the summit concluded Wednesday.
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Ukraine’s battlefield place has additionally altered the negotiating geometry in ways in which six months in the past favored Moscow significantly greater than they do at the moment. A sustained marketing campaign of drone incursions into Russian territory has degraded Russian defenses and, based on assessments circulating amongst G7 delegations, weakened Moscow’s hand on the exact second diplomatic stress is intensifying.
The summit additionally formally welcomed the preliminary peace framework between the US and Iran that Trump signed on the eve of the Evian gathering. G7 leaders stated they stand able to take part in its implementation and introduced plans to pursue diversification of vitality provide routes particularly to cut back dependence on the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic chokepoint whose vulnerability the Iran tensions uncovered — whereas rising nationwide vitality reserves.
The political drama of Ukraine and Iran occupied a lot of the summit’s early days, however Wednesday’s agenda turns towards what France’s G7 presidency has positioned because the summit’s structural core: vital minerals and the West’s gathered vulnerability to China.
The urgency will not be theoretical. In 2025, Beijing imposed export restrictions on everlasting magnets manufactured from uncommon earth supplies, and a number of other Western industries got here near operational standstill earlier than emergency measures had been improvised. The episode served as a stay demonstration of how completely China’s dominance over vital mineral processing — constructed throughout many years — had woven itself into the vitality, protection and expertise provide chains of each G7 nation concurrently. Tungsten and antimony entry for American corporations has additionally been restricted in what quantities to a scientific tightening slightly than a collection of remoted choices.
France is pushing companions at Evian to comply with a press release on vital minerals that may set up preliminary mechanisms for lowering that dependence. Measures beneath lively negotiation embrace worth help constructions, market requirements, subsidies, assured buy preparations and frameworks for scaling personal funding into provide chains situated outdoors Chinese language jurisdiction. Diplomats near the talks describe the anticipated outcomes as first steps slightly than complete options, with the acknowledgment that constructing processing and recycling capability outdoors China will take years towards a dominant place that took many years to assemble.
A buying and selling bloc for vital minerals proposed by the US in early 2026 stays in competition. Competing views on how such a construction would operate — significantly within the context of Washington’s America First orientation, which generates friction with companions who fear about being subordinated to U.S. industrial preferences — have prevented consensus.
The broader financial imbalance dialogue frames China’s position in phrases France has distilled right into a pointed method: China overproduces, the US overconsumes and Europe underinvests. The EU recorded its largest-ever commerce deficit with China final yr, exceeding €360 billion, whereas analysts describe Beijing’s accelerating transfer up the worth chain as a second China shock — the primary having reshaped international low-value manufacturing within the 2000s, the second now concentrating on superior industries.
French President Emmanuel Macron made a late method to Beijing earlier than the summit, searching for some foundation for engagement. China rejected European Union characterizations of its practices as unfair subsidies and has signaled robust countermeasures in response to Brussels’ proposed Purchase European coverage and revised expertise sovereignty rules. EU leaders convene individually in Brussels on Thursday to debate extra systematic deployment of commerce protection devices towards Chinese language import surges.
Wednesday’s agenda closes with a synthetic intelligence session over lunch. OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Anthropic chief govt Dario Amodei are anticipated to attend. The discussions are to cowl legal responsibility frameworks for AI bots and brokers and the query of how AI methods deal with and current data that’s true versus false — a topic with explicit resonance at a summit the place disinformation has shadowed practically each geopolitical thread on the desk.
