Side issues loom over G-20 summit as world leaders arrive

"Argentine President Mauricio Macri, the summit's host, has lowered expectations. ... Now a success would be a summit meeting that goes smoothly, without any major disruption"

Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri. (Reuters/Agustin Marcarian/File)

World leaders arrived Thursday in the Argentine capital for the Group of 20 summit of the globe’s largest economies as issues such as a trade war between the United States and China, the killing of a Saudi journalist in the country’s Istanbul Consulate and the conflict over Ukraine threatened to overshadow the gathering.

The two-day summit beginning Friday is supposed to focus on development, infrastructure and food security, but those seemed largely an afterthought amid soured US-European relations and as the United States, Mexico and Canada hammered out the final language of a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement expected to be signed Friday.

Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, said that this G-20 summit was once considered an opportunity for Latin American members Argentina, Brazil and Mexico “to project a regional bloc to shape a global agenda.”

But, he said, “that turned out to be a fleeting aspiration.”