The Trump administration is banning all government agencies from doing any work on the upcoming G20 conference, essentially pulling out of a forum of the world’s largest economies, according to two sources who spoke with The Washington Post.
President Trump appears to be following up on threats to boycott the conference, hosted by South Africa in Johannesburg this year, over his outlandish claims that the country is discriminating against white South Africans by taking away their land under a government expropriation law meant to undo years of racial inequality caused by apartheid.
A White House official referred the Post to Trump’s comments Monday accusing South Africa of carrying out a “genocide” against the country’s white citizens and would not attend the G20 unless the “situation is taken care of.”
“How could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G-20 Meeting when Land Confiscation and Genocide is the primary topic of conversation?” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month. “They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families.”
This week, the White House took the brazenly racist step of accepting white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees while freezing all other refugee admissions, including ending temporary protected status for refugees fleeing from Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
The South African government, as well as many white South Africans themselves, have denied Trump’s accusations. South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa said that the Trump administration has “got the wrong end of the stick here.”
“We’ll continue talking to them,” Ramaphosa said of U.S.-South African relations.
The G20 summit is scheduled to take place in November with the theme “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability,” which undoubtedly rankles Trump and the other conservatives in his administration, who have sought to purge such ideas from the U.S. government.
The move also cedes credibility and economic arguments to China at a conference the U.S. helped create, according to a third unnamed official who spoke to The Washington Post.
“It completely cedes the floor to China,” they said, noting that the Chinese government comes to such events with detailed plans. “Beijing is so organized at these multilateral engagements. This will guarantee they don’t have to face us, which basically leaves the Europeans to uphold Western values on their own.”
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