What Does the G20 Do?

Introduction

The Group of Twenty (G20), originally a collection of finance ministers and central bankers from nineteen of the world’s largest economies and the European Union (EU), was created in 1999 to bring together the most important industrialized and developing economies to discuss international economic growth and financial stability. Elevated to leaders’ level in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the G20 has evolved into a major forum for discussing a widening array of pressing global issues. The annual summits have occasionally led to major international agreements, such as the 2009 creation of the Financial Stability Board and the 2021 agreement on a global minimum corporate tax. However, since its widely acclaimed success in responding to the global financial crisis, the group has seen a dramatic weakening of its early cohesion. 

Growing geopolitical tensions further strain the group’s ability to reach consensus. Strategic rivalry between the United States and China, sharp divisions between Group of Seven (G7) members and Russia over the war in Ukraine, and wider conflicts such as the Israel–Hamas fighting have complicated efforts to reach unified outcomes. These fault lines have weakened the G20’s ability to coordinate long-standing priorities, from trade and debt relief to climate commitments. 

Who is in the G20?

The G20 is a forum comprising nineteen countries with some of the world’s largest economies, as well as the EU and the African Union (AU). Its members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States. Spain has been a permanent guest since 2008, and several other countries have been invited to summits by the annual host. Major international organizations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO) are also regular participants. 

Every year, the leaders of G20 members meet to discuss major economic and financial matters and coordinate policy on other issues of shared concern. Over the years, the forum has also confronted urgent political and security challenges—for example, how to address a covert Iranian nuclear plant at the 2009 summit and how to administer a partial ceasefire in Syria at the 2017 meeting.  

The G20 is not a permanent institution with headquarters, offices, or staff. Instead, its leadership rotates on an annual basis among its members, its decisions are made by consensus, and implementation of its agenda depends on the political will of the individual states. Its agreements do not have the force of international law but can shape global rules and norms. 

Why does the G20 matter?

Together, G20 members account for 85 percent of global economic output, 75 percent of global exports, and about two-thirds of the world’s population. These figures have remained relatively stable while the corresponding rates for G7 nations, a smaller group of advanced democracies, have shrunk as larger, emerging markets take up a relatively greater share of the world’s economy.  

The G20 was formed in 1999, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, to convene finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s largest established and emerging economies. A decade later, at the height of the global economic crisis, the G20 was elevated to include heads of state and government. Many experts credit the G20 with quick action during that period; former CFR fellow Stewart Patrick said the group “rescued a global financial system in free fall.” In 2008 and 2009, G20 nations agreed to spending measures worth $4 trillion to revive their economies, rejected trade barriers, and implemented far-reaching reforms of the financial system.  

Since then, many observers say the G20 has struggled to achieve similar success on goals including coordinating monetary and fiscal policies, promoting sustainable and inclusive growth, addressing debt vulnerabilities, delivering on climate commitments, and rooting out corruption and tax evasion. Geopolitical analysts such as Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini have long warned that a “G-Zero” world—one in which countries go at it alone or form ad hoc coalitions to pursue their interests—was replacing coordinated global leadership.  

The G20 has sought to reassert its relevance by expanding its membership, and the group remains more representative of the current international balance of power than blocs of countries formed earlier, such as the G7. Rising democracies including Brazil, India, and Indonesia sit alongside influential autocracies such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. For this reason, Patrick described the 2008 elevation of the G20 as a watershed moment in global governance and argued that the group was the best-suited forum for tackling major global challenges. Since the G20’s inception, the addition of the AU in 2023 has brought to the table a bloc home to approximately 1.5 billion people and an economy worth some $3.1 trillion as of 2025.  

The G20 operates primarily through two channels: the finance track—led by finance ministers and central bank governors—and the sherpa track, in which senior advisors to heads of state shape the summit agenda through yearlong negotiations. These tracks coordinate dozens of ministerial meetings and technical working groups on issues such as foreign affairs, labor, health, and digital policy. International organizations including the IMF, World Bank, WTO, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and World Health Organization participate regularly, and each host country invites six additional guest leaders, often from its region. This extensive process culminates in the annual leaders’ summit, enabling broad policy coordination even when headline outcomes appear limited. 

What’s been on its agenda?

The G20 was created to promote strong, sustainable, and balanced global growth, with a primary focus on macroeconomic coordination and financial stability. Over time, however, its agenda has expanded to include issues such as economic development, climate change, global health, and artificial intelligence. In recent years, progress on many of these items has slowed as widening geopolitical and economic divides—among advanced, emerging, and developing economies—have made it increasingly difficult for the group to reach consensus. 

Climate issues remain a persistent part of the agenda, but summits have produced few major breakthroughs. At the 2021 Rome summit, for example, countries agreed to curb methane emissions and end public financing for most new coal power plants overseas, but they said nothing about limiting coal use domestically. In 2024, Brazil placed climate and environmental governance at the center of its presidential agenda, and the G20 Rio de Janeiro Leaders’ Declaration served as a foundation for the 2025 UN climate conference in Belém. 

Emerging-economy priorities have gained prominence as the G20 has shifted more attention toward the Global South. India’s 2023 presidency elevated issues such as debt sustainability and food security, and that year the AU was admitted as a permanent member, expanding representation to fifty-five countries. 

South Africa’s 2025 presidency—the fourth consecutive hosted by a country in the Global South—is focused on “solidarity, equality, and sustainability,” with an emphasis on multilateralism and improving debt and development finance. The theme has prompted criticism from some U.S. officials; Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a February G20 foreign ministers’ meeting, calling the agenda “anti-American.”

What have been the main points of contention?

Geopolitical tensions. Global divisions—heightened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and reignited hostilities between Israel and Hamas, and spurred by strategic competition between China and the United States—have increasingly threatened cooperation. In the past, U.S. bipartisan legislative efforts have aimed to deny Russia standing in the WTO and other international institutions. Russia’s participation in the G20 has grown contentious, with some Western countries seeking to exclude Moscow, though members including China and Brazil have opposed that idea.   

Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the 2023 summit. Putin, who faces a 2023 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, skipped the 2024 summit in Brazil and announced he will skip the 2025 summit in South Africa.

Xi and Trump will also not attend the 2025 meeting. Since returning to office, Trump has expressed skepticism toward multilateral commitments, and in recent months, has accused South Africa of mistreatment of minority white Afrikaners. Other leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, will also not be in attendance. 

Economic strains. G20 members remain divided on how to address persistent economic strains disproportionately affecting emerging economies. The aftershocks of the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine have hardened inflationary pressures, driven up energy and food costs, and engendered a stronger U.S. dollar at the expense of depreciating currencies in emerging economies—worsening their debt distress. More than one hundred countries turned to the IMF for pandemic assistance, with lending reaching a record more than $145 billion in February 2025. The World Bank’s chief economist warned in April that about half of some 150 developing countries are unable to make debt service payments or are at risk of getting there. 

Ahead of its 2020 summit, the G20 introduced a Common Framework for Debt Treatments, but only four countries—Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia—have requested relief, largely due to divisions among lender countries. In May 2025, the AU held its first debt conference in Lomé, Togo, calling for [PDF] reforms to the framework, including a “universally accepted methodology for comparability of treatment.” South Africa has made low-income debt sustainability a priority during its 2025 presidency, but some civil society and global debt justice groups have criticized Pretoria’s limited progress and urged the government to push harder for reforms. 

Trade escalation. The group’s long-standing commitment to WTO principles—reducing tariffs and other trade barriers—has increasingly collided with challenges to globalization and intensifying geoeconomic competition. In his first term, Trump launched a multifront trade war, imposing tariffs on China and several other G20 members, many of which the Joe Biden administration largely left in place. Biden’s efforts to “de–risk” the U.S. economy from China through the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, new export controls on advanced semiconductors, and an outbound investment screening regime laid the groundwork for Washington’s broader shift toward economic security. 

Trump’s second presidency has dramatically escalated this trajectory. In April, Trump announced a sweeping set of so-called reciprocal tariffs, including a baseline 10 percent tariff on almost all imports into the United States. Certain G20 countries, such as Brazil and India, faced rates as high as 50 percent by August. The administration has described these tariffs as temporary and subject to review, with further adjustments on the horizon as trade negotiations evolve.  

Climate change. Climate change remains yet another area of contention. Early attempts to phase out coal use and fossil fuel subsidies collapsed at a 2021 meeting of G20 environment ministers after facing opposition from China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. And following the invasion of Ukraine, Germany and other G20 countries have reneged on previous promises to stop financing fossil fuel projects overseas. The 2023 New Delhi summit again failed to produce ambitious climate action, calling only for a “phasedown” of coal rather than a “phaseout.” The fault lines within the G20 have since widened, underscored by Trump’s 2025 UN address, in which he dismissed climate change and championed the use of fossil fuels over renewable energy.

What else is worth watching for at G20 summits?

Although the G20’s formal agenda is negotiated throughout the year in dozens of ministerial meetings and technical working groups, there is often lots of bilateral diplomacy that happens on its margins. Heads of state routinely use the gathering to conduct high-stakes meetings outside the official program—talks that often overshadow the summit itself. Recent examples include the first in-person meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi at the 2022 Bali summit, the launch of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor at the 2023 New Delhi summit, and discussions among North American leaders about the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement at the 2024 Rio de Janeiro summit.  

Trump’s decision to skip the 2025 summit—and the planned streamlining of the 2026 summit and its related workstreams, along with expectations of a smaller guest list—could diminish these opportunities, particularly as the United States prepares to host the G20 in 2026 with a more restricted agenda and without broader ministerial meetings.