“I’m delaying because I don’t feel as a G7 that might represent what’s happening in the world. This is a group of countries that are very outdated,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.
The G7 consists of the US, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan.
White House strategic communications director Alyssa Farah said the president wanted to bring other traditional allies, including the Five Eyes countries, into the mix, as well as those affected by coronavirus, and to discuss the future of China.
The president recently said he plans to host the G7 privately by the end of next month, but has faced mixed and uncertain responses from other G7 leaders in attending the summit directly in the middle of a pandemic.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel “cannot confirm” that she will attend the G7 summit in Washington amid a coronavirus pandemic, a Chancellery spokesman said on Saturday.
“The Chancellor thanked President Trump for his invitation to the G7 summit in Washington at the end of June,” Merkel’s spokesman said in a statement.
“To this day, given the overall pandemic situation, he has not been able to confirm his personal participation, that is, a trip to Washington,” the spokesman added.
Meanwhile, German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, expressed “disappointment” at the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization, saying that the decision taken by the Trump administration was a “setback” for international health policy.
Other world leaders are also clever in connection with the G7 summit proposed by Trump.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday that he could not yet commit to attending the proposed G7 meeting in person because of concerns over the transmission of the virus and Canadian quarantine rules.
“There is a significant health preoccupation that we have around holding it directly but there is no question that meeting directly in an ideal situation is far more effective than virtual meeting,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Trump on Thursday. The two leaders “agreed on the importance of holding a G7 directly in the near future,” according to a White House call read. But the White House did not say whether Macron had committed to come directly.
Trump first introduced the idea of reviving the summit as
live event in a tweet on May 20, indicating that it will signal to the world that everything is back to normal after the coronavirus pandemic has stopped traveling and freezing the global economy.
Nadine Schmidt from CNN, Laura Smith-Spark, Paula Newton, Kevin Liptak and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.
