G20 leaders are 'saving the furniture' as Trump leads a boycott

It began with an ambush.

Mid-way through the Oval Office meeting, surrounded by cameras, Donald Trump told his staff to dim the lights and play a video purportedly documenting the "persecution" of white South African farmers.

Then, he brandished newspaper articles apparently pushing the discredited claims.

His guest, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, sat in awkward silence beside him, refusing to be drawn into the Trump show. Ramaphosa flatly rejects the fringe theories which are being amplified by Trump supporters including South African-born billionaire Elon Musk also standing in the room.

Nine months later, Trump isn't letting it go. What started as an ambush has escalated into a full-blown boycott with the US president refusing to attend this weekend's G20 leaders' summit — the first to be held on African soil.

Trump's absence could neuter the forum's ability to move the dial on the summit's priorities including helping nations adapt to weather disasters, transition to clean energy, cut their excessive debt costs and work together in the global rush for critical minerals.

Australia shares many of these priorities and as a middle power, helped establish the G20 leaders' summit, the world's premier economic forum, nearly 20 years ago.

"It is a total disgrace that the G20 will be held in South Africa," Trump wrote on social media earlier this month.

"Afrikaners [People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants] are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated."

Upon reading the news, Ramaphosa clapped back: "their loss".

It should be South Africa's big moment, a chance to showcase its diplomatic and economic potential. But it's hard to ignore the consequences of the world's most important multilateral forum missing, arguably, its most powerful member.

Practically, it's uncharted territory; diplomats don't yet know if there'll be a final leaders' declaration, traditionally a consensus statement, because the US will not be there.

Global superpowers absent

The high-powered gathering of 19 major industrial nations, and the European Union, represents 85 per cent of global GDP and two-thirds of the world's population.

Trump won't be the only high-profile absence this weekend.

According to Reuters, Trump's ally, Argentine President Javier Milei, is also staying away on ideological grounds. Russia's Vladimir Putin will skip it because of the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him over the invasion of Ukraine, while China is sending Premier Li Qiang, instead of President Xi Jinping.

Not only is Trump boycotting the summit, but the US is also not sending a single government representative.

"No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue," Trump wrote, referring to debunked claims that white farmers are being persecuted.

Australia has skin in this game: former prime minister Kevin Rudd played a decisive role in founding the G20 leaders' meeting in 2008, to help coordinate the response to the Global Financial Crisis and progress talks on climate change.

It's given Australia a seat at the table for world economic policy, and for the past 17 years, prime ministers have routinely made the pilgrimage to the annual talks (even hosting in 2014).

'Save the furniture'

As he flew to Johannesburg, for his final diplomatic summit of the season, Anthony Albanese insisted the G20 was still relevant, despite the absence of the "two superpowers", referring to the US and Chinese presidents.

"The G20 is certainly relevant," Albanese said, telling reporters he will hold bilateral meetings with the leaders of India and South Africa among others.

"Whenever there is a forum that Australia has the opportunity to participate in, we need to take it, we are a middle power" he said.

"We're not doing it for fun or sightseeing; we're doing it because it's in our national interest."

The prime minister will be on the ground for 48 hours before returning to Canberra on Monday for the final sitting week of the year.

With an isolationist president in the White House, former Department of Foreign Affairs secretary Peter Varghese said the best Australia could do at multilateral forums like the G20 was "save the furniture".

"Trump's non-attendance reflects his fundamentally unilateralist instincts and his scepticism of many multilateral groups," Varghese told the ABC, pointing to Trump's absence from the recent APEC summit in South Korea.

"There is no question that while multilateralism is not dead, large parts of it are in suspended animation and will not be revived for as long as the US, the architect of the post-war order, is no longer interested in it.

"The best we can do is save as much of the furniture as we can and to look for arrangements which are bigger than regional and short of global."

'Empty chair' handover

For Treasurer Jim Chalmers, the G20 is an opportunity for leaders to bolster confidence and certainty in "choppy waters", as global growth falls to its weakest pace since Rudd helped establish the G20 leaders' summit in 2008.

"The world has more or less muddled through the last six or nine months and dealt with these escalating trade tensions, in a way that is a little bit better than what many had feared," Mr Chalmers said in Perth this week.

"But that doesn't mean there's not still a lot of global economic uncertainty, a lot of risk, a lot of volatility and unpredictability.

"So that strikes me as the most important thing for the G20 leaders to focus on."

While Trump won't be there, he'll loom large over it.

At the end of the summit on Sunday, Ramaphosa is meant to hand over the G20 to the next host, who happens to be Trump.

"I don't want to hand over to an empty chair, but the empty chair will be there," Ramaphosa said last week of the US president's boycott.

He made the comments while preparing for the summit in Soweto, according to Reuters, the Johannesburg suburb where Black people were once confined under the apartheid rules that barred them from living in the city itself.

Trump's attacks aside, South Africa is wrestling with some complicated legacies of its own.