Trump arrives for G20 risking isolation over climate

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived for a G20 summit in Hamburg on Thursday, risking isolation on climate policy and the wrath of anti-capitalist protesters threatening to disrupt the meeting of the world’s leading economic powers.

UPDATE: President Donald Trump, when asked on Thursday if the United States had given up on working with China’s Xi Jinping, told reporters “never give up.”

Trump, who is in Hamburg for the G20 summit, has pressured China to help to rein in North Korea’s nuclear activities.

UPDATE: German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of a summit of world leaders in Hamburg on Thursday, discussing North Korea, the Middle East, the conflict in eastern Ukraine and G20 themes, a German government spokesman said.

UPDATE: One day before his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that no one knows for sure whether Moscow intervened in the 2016 U.S. election but that he suspected Russian involvement.

UPDATE: In a joint statement of the leaders form WTO, IMF and the World Bank, the G20 heads of stat are called on to reinvigorate trade and find better ways of supporting workers.

UPDATE: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she saw various options for resolving differences over climate policy at a G20 summit in Hamburg that she is hosting.

U.S. President Donald Trump faces tension at the meeting with other leaders from the big Group of 20 economies after he decided last month to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate deal.

Merkel told reporters that as host of the summit, which formally starts on Friday, it was her role to find compromises. On climate policy, she added: “There are various options, which can be discussed.”

UPDATE: Merkel says that she does not see herself as a mediator between Trump and Putin. The German Chancellor also said that the role of the host is to find a compromise. She told reporters she will represent Germany’s but also the European Union’s interests at the G20 summit.

UPDATE: Of the world’s 20 leading economies, Italy, Brazil, France and Germany are closest to meeting international targets to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with Saudi Arabia and the United States trailing at the bottom, according to an index released ahead of this week’s G20 summit.

The G20 countries are responsible for 75 percent of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, but are not yet on track to cut those sufficiently to prevent temperatures reaching dangerously high levels, the index compilers said on Thursday.

“It’s time for the world’s richest economies … to step up their game on climate action,” said Wael Hmaidan, executive director of the Climate Action Network (CAN), which published the index with Germanwatch and the NewClimate Institute.

“If we are to realise the goals of the Paris Agreement we need countries to get down to the business of serious implementation,” he said.

Trump, who paused to wave when descending the steps of Air Force One with his wife Melania, faces tension with leaders of the other major economies after he decided last month to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate deal.

Trade policy is another area of contention at the summit, which protesters aim to disrupt. “Welcome to Hell” is their greeting for Trump and other world leaders arriving Hamburg for the two-day meeting, which formally starts on Friday.