At the G20 summit
“Not a good decision” – Merz criticizes Trump
Updated 11/23/2025 – 3:54 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
US President Donald Trump, the most important member, boycotted the first G20 summit in Africa. Chancellor Merz finds clear words for this.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to boycott the G20 summit in South Africa. “I don’t think it was a good decision by the American government to be absent here. But the American government itself has to know that,” said the CDU leader to journalists at the end of the meeting of the leading industrialized and emerging countries in Johannesburg, South Africa. “It was good for us that we were here.”
What fascinated him at the summit was the fact “that you can see that the world is currently rearranging itself and new connections are emerging here,” said Merz. “The United States of America played a fairly minor role” – until the final words of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who handed over the G20 chairmanship to the USA as the next host in 2026. “So a lot has happened here, and America has been mentioned in passing.”
Merz said he still had no ideas about how the USA wanted to organize its G20 presidency next year. He heard that the plan was to hold the final meeting at Mar-a-Lago – a Trump property in Florida. “But we will certainly see some suggestions from the American side about what that should look like.”
The G20 group includes 19 states, the European Union and the African Union. Trump was absent from Johannesburg because he accused South Africa, without evidence, of persecuting and killing white farmers there. South Africa rejects the allegations. Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping also did not attend the summit. Germany was represented by Merz and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD).
Merz does not see that Russia could return to the G8 format in the future. “I cannot see at the moment that there is a willingness among the six members of the G7 today who are not America to accept Russia back into this group,” said the CDU politician at the press conference.
He pointed out that a return to the G8 format can only be agreed upon by consensus. French President Emmanuel Macron made a similar statement the day before. He said the conditions for Russia to rejoin do not exist.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was kicked out of the then G8 in 2014 after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea. Since then, his return has been considered unthinkable for Europeans – especially after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, US President Donald Trump sees it differently. He described Russia’s exclusion from the group of states at the last G7 summit as a “big mistake.” The current G7 round consists of the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan. The EU is also involved.
