GoKawiilPresident Donald Trump is set to head to France for the annual summit of the Group of Seven nations, after the U.S. and Iran came to an agreement on a deal to end the Middle East war that has stirred political and economic strife around the world.
The three-day G7 summit, which starts Monday, is taking place in Évian-les-Bains, on France's eastern border with Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Trump said he will depart for the summit "immediately" after attending a mixed-martial arts event that is set to take place Sunday evening on the White House's South Lawn. The UFC match coincides with the president's 80th birthday.
As France began its turn leading the G7 in January, President Emmanuel Macron expressed a desire for the group to prioritize reducing inequality and fostering multilateralism while addressing inflamed trade and geopolitical tensions. Those priorities may be counter to Trump's America First agenda, under which he's imposed tariffs, gone after other world leaders directly and on social media and started a war. And inequality in the U.S. is worse than in every European country except for Turkey and just short of its highest point ever, according to the World Bank's Gini index.
During his second term in the White House, even more than in his first, Trump has distanced himself from traditional U.S. allies and repeatedly flirted with pulling the U.S. out of NATO, the key defense alliance between the U.S. and Europe.
While the nearly four-month Iran war has drawn much of the world's focus, the G7 leaders are also likely to spend time addressing Russia's war against Ukraine, which continues to rage in eastern Europe.
The seven nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. — and the European Union are also expected to discuss issues related to artificial intelligence, online protections and the fight against organized crime.
There could be "real fireworks" on AI, said Victor Cha, president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Europe is eager to rein in Big Tech and regulate AI leaders on energy and environmental grounds, while the U.S. under Trump has opposed aggressively regulating the nascent industry, Cha said.
But Macron, who has been courting tech leaders, invited OpenAI chief Sam Altman to attend the G7 and participate in talks with the leaders, the tech company told CNBC. Bloomberg reported that executives from Anthropic and Google are also slated to attend the conference.
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