No Photo, No Communiqué, Real Business: What Rubio's Atlanta G20 Reveals Before Trump's Miami Summit
Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted G20 foreign ministers in Atlanta with a "back to basics" agenda of growth, energy, trade and supply chains. Europe's refusal to stand next to Russia's Lavrov grabbed headlines. The bigger story is how America is reshaping the G20.
By Clara Hughes
For two days this week, the world's major economies sent their foreign ministers to Atlanta. Secretary of State Marco Rubio chaired the G20 foreign ministers' meeting on October 30 and 31, the final ministerial meeting, Reuters reported, before the leaders' summit President Trump will host at his Doral resort in Miami in mid-December. Much of the coverage focused on a missing photograph. According to Reuters, the traditional "family photo" was skipped after European ministers refused to be pictured with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. A U.S. official told Reuters that Washington wanted to avoid a "spectacle." But the photo is not the story. The story is that the United States set the agenda, kept everyone at the table, and steered the G20 back toward the economic questions it was created to address. "We are tasked, on behalf of the nations that we serve, to work together ... to coordinate responses to emerging crises and to protect our shared interests," Rubio told the ministers, according to Reuters. Keep reading with Altas Premium. Below: America's "back