The United States is hosting the G20 Summit this year. As part of the G20 Process various ministers and ambassadors from all of the G20 ministerial sessions, attend summits in the lead-in to the political leader summit in Miami this December.
During the opening session of the G20 trade plenary session, Greer outlined four strategic priorities that President Trump is bringing to the center of the G20 trade group this year. “There are four workstreams the U.S. Presidency has focused on over the course of the year: (1) the weaponization of food, (2) structural excess capacity and production, (3) the Most-Favored-Nation principle, and (4) forced labor in global supply chains.” [READ MORE] These were the directed topics at the beginning of the summit.
Speaking from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the G20 Trade Ministerial Session, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer gives important remarks and answers questions from the media at the conclusion of the two-day event. WATCH:
Within one question from an EU/Canada media stenographer, there’s a rather brutally obvious statement from USTR Greer. Absolutely epic. Both Canada and Europe are missing a very key something from their economic model, CONSUMERS!
Instead of focusing on growth within their domestic economies, both Canada and Europe rely on the USA to provide the CONSUMERS for their goods. Negotiating from that position is not too difficult.
ESSENTIALLY, currently Canada sends their overproduction to the USA (hence their trade surplus). Currently the EU send their overproduction to the USA (hence their trade surplus). Block those inbound surpluses and what exactly is Canada and the EU going to do with their newly acquired excess?
The two lowest growth economic systems, that are both missing the critical component of ‘consumers’, are going to send their excess products to each other? Think about it.
Another wolverine.
Ugh. Milwaukee. They ought to have held it almost anywhere else.
Inflation at 3.1% and unemployment at 4.1%…the best stats in my lifetime.
That is kind of funny!
Bunch of knuckleheads.
G20 trade ministers did not reach a consensus text on forced labor at the Milwaukee meeting that ended today, and the holdouts have not been named publicly.
The only G20 member that had publicly signaled opposition beforehand was Brazil. Reporting in Valor and Brasil 247 said Brasília intended to reject the U.S. proposal for a G20 information-sharing mechanism to keep forced-labor goods out of trade, on the grounds that it could be used to restrict market access rather than just improve transparency. That stance followed the July 2026 USTR Section 301 action, which put an extra 12.5% duty on most Brazilian goods for lacking an effective forced-labor import ban.
China is the other obvious candidate, but it has not been named as a holdout on this specific text. It was the sole dissenter at the September G20 finance meeting on language about “non-market policies,” and USTR’s June 2026 report found China has no legal ban on imports made with forced labor.
Russia attended the Milwaukee talks (Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov) and is also on that USTR list; it has not been identified as a signer or a refuser either.
“forced labor in global supply chains.”
International companies and governments still use slave labor.