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G20 Powers Ahead With New Energy As World Leaders Brush Off America’s ‘Dramatic’ Boycott
When the U.S. announced it would boycott the 2025 G20 Summit in Johannesburg, the decision landed with the subtlety of a dropped piano.
For months, Washington had framed South Africa as an unreliable host. Too vocal about Gaza, too insistent on reforming global financial institutions, too willing to challenge Western orthodoxy on sanctions and development, and too insistent that there is no white genocide happening in the country.
- The U.S. boycott of the 2025 G20 Summit failed to derail the event, with global leaders proceeding and shaping the agenda without Washington's dominance.
- Without the U.S., the G20 climate commitments were more ambitious.
- The summit marked a breakthrough in sovereign debt talks, acknowledging systemic imbalances, and urging faster restructuring.
- Global health equity saw real progress, focusing on pandemic preparedness, regional vaccine hubs, and equitable medicine access without U.S. pharmaceutical pressures.
- The G20 showed a shift toward multipolar cooperation, with the Global South driving reformist language and a world willing to act without U.S. approval.
The assumption in diplomatic circles was that the boycott would either derail the summit or at least dull its influence. But when the meetings opened at the Sandton Convention Centre, the world simply carried on.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during the opening plenary session at the G20 Summit on November 22 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
In fact, something unexpected unfolded. Without Washington in the room, the G20 looked a little less like a hostage to U.S. domestic tantrums and a little more like a forum where the rest of the world, especially the large and impatient bloc of Global South economies, could set the pace.
That does not mean the gathering suddenly became a revolutionary platform for global justice. But it did demonstrate that the gravitational pull of the U.S. is weakening, and that the world’s major economies can negotiate without waiting for an American cue.
A boycott that echoed louder in Washington
The boycott did not spread. Not even close. European leaders arrived on schedule, determined not to let transatlantic solidarity become collateral damage. India came with a full delegation, eager to shape the narrative as a rising power.
Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Argentina took advantage of the visibility. Even states normally anxious about Washington’s displeasure made a point of showing up. One EU diplomat, speaking to reporters, described the boycott as “a self-inflicted absence.”
U.S. President Donald Trump exchanges gifts with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo in late October. Japan is a G20 member, and Takaichi was in Johannesburg for the summit. Image credits: The White House/Flickr
Off the record, some were less diplomatic: “The U.S. threw its toys out the cot, and we’re not babysitting.”
And without that familiar U.S. presence, the quiet vetoes, the insistence on wording that offends no lobbyist in Washington, the reflexive red lines on finance and climate, the atmosphere shifted. Delegates said the conversations were calmer, less performative, and far less clogged by transatlantic signaling.
A forum free of the U.S. veto effect
The absence of the U.S. didn’t eliminate geopolitical tensions, but it did remove one of the biggest obstacles to discussing structural inequalities in the global system. Washington has long opposed, delayed, or diluted language on debt, climate finance, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) reforms; with that pressure gone, negotiators had more room to maneuver.
World leaders during the G20 Summit. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Nowhere was this more visible than in debates over sovereign debt. More than 50 countries currently spend more servicing debt than they do on health care or education: a crisis worsened by rising interest rates, climate disasters, and a financial architecture still shaped by the 1980s.
Debt reform: The first break in a decades-old wall
For decades, the U.S. position has been to treat debt distress as an “individual country problem” rather than a systemic flaw. In Johannesburg, freed from the gravitational drag of U.S. objections, the G20 adopted a framework that acknowledges structural imbalance and calls for accelerated restructurings, and an expansion of climate-linked debt swaps. The communiqué also includes a commitment to reviewing IMF voting rules: a topic Washington usually blocks before it reaches the agenda.
None of this turns the financial order upside down. The IMF will not suddenly redistribute power away from wealthy creditor nations. But the symbolism matters: this is the first G20 in years when debt discussions were not pre-emptively watered down to avoid offending U.S. Treasury officials.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Image credits: Milken Institute/Flickr
It suggests that other members are more willing to challenge the institutions that Washington dominates, and that the credibility of the current financial architecture is eroding even among its traditional defenders.
Climate politics without America’s oiled brake pedal
Climate politics followed a similar pattern. With the U.S. absent (the world’s largest historical emitter and one of the most obstructionist players in climate finance), the G20 embraced unusually ambitious language, committing to tripling adaptation finance and expanding support for loss and damage mechanisms.
Delegations from India, South Africa, and several Latin American countries pushed hard for recognizing the inequities embedded in carbon consumption patterns. Europe, perhaps sensing an opportunity to claim moral ground, backed calls for exploring taxes on carbon emissions from luxury goods.
The Sandton financial center in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the summit was held. Image credits: THEGIFT777/Getty Images
These are still promises, not policies. And without the U.S., the world’s climate finance gap remains astronomical. However, Johannesburg revealed how much climate ambition has been held back by Washington’s reluctance to tie itself to obligations that might endure beyond election cycles.
For once, the conversation wasn’t defined by what Washington would or wouldn’t accept. Delegates noted that the dynamic felt less like a diplomatic audition for ‘American Approval Idol’ and more like a negotiation among peers.
A rare space for real progress: Global health equity
The most promising area of genuine coordination was global health. South Africa used its host role to recenter pandemic preparedness, regional manufacturing, and equitable access to medicines. The painful lesson of COVID-19 (that wealthy nations hoard vaccines while preaching solidarity) shaped every conversation.
Without U.S. insistence on protecting pharmaceutical monopolies or prioritizing private-sector contracts, other G20 members revived proposals for regional vaccine manufacturing hubs and public-health data systems not dependent on Western-owned platforms.
Takaichi at the summit in Johannesburg. Image credits: Henry Nicholls-WPA Pool/Getty Images
Unlike climate finance or debt reform, these are initiatives that can realistically take shape within the decade. The political appetite is strong, and the infrastructure already exists in early form across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Outside the conference rooms, Johannesburg added another layer of truth-telling. Civil society groups flooded the streets with demands that mirrored, and often exceeded, what was happening inside: calls for debt cancellation, an end to extractive mining practices, serious climate action, and accountability for Gaza.
Protesters challenged the idea that the G20 could serve as a moral authority while member states continue to enable violence, economic exploitation, and environmental devastation. Delegates were greeted by banners reading “Debt Kills,” “Justice for Gaza,” and “Your Climate Promises Are Empty.”
French President Emmanuel Macron was a leading figure at the summit. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang attended the G20 Summit instead of President Xi Jinping. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Streets push harder than diplomats
For many activists, the U.S. boycott was not a diplomatic miscalculation. It was a gift. It forced the summit to confront issues Washington prefers to sidestep, and underlined the hypocrisy of a global order in which one absent state still claims moral leadership. The cherry on the cake was JD Vance begging to be let back in when the country realized the world still spins without U.S. intervention.
Whether the summit was a success depends on what one expected from it. As a spectacle of geopolitical alignment, Johannesburg sent a clear message: the U.S. can decide not to show up, but the world will still meet.
The Global South did not just participate; it shaped the agenda, with South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia driving much of the intellectual and political framing. Even European leaders seemed more willing than usual to lean into reformist language, perhaps recognizing that the old script is losing its audience.
In terms of concrete policy, the outcomes were more mixed. Debt reform saw meaningful movement, even if the devil lives permanently in the follow-through. Climate commitments were stronger than expected but still fall short of scientific reality. Health equity gained ground and may be the most tangible legacy of the Johannesburg summit.
None of this amounts to a global transformation. But it does reveal an institution slightly less locked in place than many analysts assumed.
Image credit: G20
A world moving on, with or without the squawking bald eagle
For Washington, the bigger story may be what its absence revealed about its fading leverage. Boycotting a summit has always been a high-risk diplomatic gesture; doing so at a time when U.S. influence is already under scrutiny is even riskier.
Delegates said the conversations were calmer, less performative, and far less clogged by transatlantic signaling, writes the author. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
The Johannesburg G20 Summit showed that the U.S. is no longer the indispensable participant it once was. The world does not grind to a halt when America is unhappy. Decisions get made, alliances shift, and institutions adapt. Perhaps even more easily.
This doesn’t mean the U.S. is irrelevant. Far from it. But it does suggest a drift toward selective multilateralism, where Washington engages only when the agenda aligns with its preferences and walks out when it doesn’t.
That approach may protect short-term political interests at home, but it weakens American credibility in the long run. If Washington keeps choosing absence over negotiation, it risks watching the global order reshape itself without its input.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Image credits: Leon Neal/Getty Images
The Johannesburg summit didn’t remake the world. But it did reveal a world willing to move, coordinate, and even challenge orthodoxy without the U.S. acting as conductor. The G20 still suffers from its own contradictions and hypocrisies. It still punches below its collective weight.
Yet this year, in a moment heavy with geopolitical fragmentation and global inequality, the gathering showed that multipolar cooperation is not only possible, it may also be slowly becoming the norm.
Washington may not like the direction. But the rest of the world is moving forward anyway.
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