WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he is barring South Africa from participating in the Group of 20 summit next year at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a US government representative at this year’s global meeting.
Trump chose not to have an American delegation attend the recent summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.
The Republican president, in a social media post, said South Africa had refused to hand over its G20 hosting responsibilities to a senior representative of the US Embassy when the summit ended over the weekend.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere,” he said, “and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately.”
In some ways, Trump views next year’s G20 summit as personal, given that he announced it will be at his golf club in Doral, Florida.
This year’s summit in Johannesburg, the first held in Africa, was boycotted by the United States, a G20 founding member and the world’s biggest economy. The meeting’s declaration, giving more attention to issues that affect developing countries, went unsigned by Washington, and the Trump administration expressed its opposition to South Africa’s agenda, especially the parts that focus on climate change.
On Monday, the US took over the rotating presidency of the G20, leaving the long-term impact of the South African declaration unclear.
By tradition, the host country hands over a symbolic wooden gavel to the nation taking over the G20 presidency. But there was no American official on hand to receive it from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa because of the boycott.
The US wanted to send a representative from its embassy. South Africa refused, saying it was an insult for Ramaphosa to hand over to what it called a junior official.
Trump has claimed that white Afrikaner farmers in South Africa are being killed and that their land is being seized. The South African government and others, including some Afrikaners themselves, say Trump’s claims are the result of misinformation.
South Africa has been a target for Trump since he returned to office at the start of the year, with his administration casting the country as anti-American because of its diplomatic ties with China, Russia and Iran.
Last month, the Trump administration announced it would restrict the number of refugees admitted annually to the US to 7,500, with most of the spots reserved for white South Africans. Trump had suspended the refugee program on his first day in office in January. Since then only a trickle have entered the country, mostly white South Africans. In May, the administration welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans as refugees.
Afrikaners are South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch but also French and German colonial settlers who first came to the country in the 17th century.
Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of white minority rule from 1948-1994, leading to decades of hostility between them and South Africa’s Black majority. But Afrikaners are not a homogenous group, and some fought against apartheid. There are an estimated 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million.
Trump says he’s barring South Africa from participating in next year’s G20 summit near Miami
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Trump says he’s barring South Africa from participating in next year’s G20 summit near Miami
- This year’s summit in Johannesburg, the first held in Africa, was boycotted by the United States, a G20 founding member and the world’s biggest economy
Hungary says it will block a key EU loan to Ukraine until Russian oil shipments resume
- Szijjártó said: “As long as Ukraine blocks the resumption of oil supplies to Hungary, Hungary will block European Union decisions that are important and favorable for Ukraine”
- Hungary’s decision to block the key funding came two days after it suspended diesel shipments
BUDAPEST: Hungary will block a planned 90-billion-euro ($106-billion) European Union loan to Ukraine until the flow of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline resumes, Hungary’s foreign minister said.
Russian oil shipments to Hungary and Slovakia have been interrupted since Jan. 27 after what Ukrainian officials said was a Russian drone attack damaged the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian crude across Ukrainian territory and into Central Europe.
Hungary and Slovakia, which have both received a temporary exemption from an EU policy prohibiting imports of Russian oil, have accused Ukraine — without providing evidence — of deliberately holding up supplies. Both countries ceased shipping diesel to Ukraine this week over the interruption in oil flows .
In a video posted on social media Friday evening, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó accused Ukraine of “blackmailing” Hungary by failing to restart shipments. He said his government would block a massive interest-free loan the EU approved in December to help Kyiv to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years.
“We will not give in to this blackmail. We do not support Ukraine’s war, we will not pay for it,” Szijjártó said. “As long as Ukraine blocks the resumption of oil supplies to Hungary, Hungary will block European Union decisions that are important and favorable for Ukraine.”
Hungary’s decision to block the key funding came two days after it suspended diesel shipments to its embattled neighbor and only days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Nearly every country in Europe has significantly reduced or entirely ceased Russian energy imports since Moscow launched its war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Yet Hungary and Slovakia — both EU and NATO members — have maintained and even increased supplies of Russian oil and gas.
Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has long argued Russian fossil fuels are indispensable for its economy and that switching to energy sourced from elsewhere would cause an immediate economic collapse — an argument some experts dispute.
Widely seen as the Kremlin’s biggest advocate in the EU, Orbán has vigorously opposed the bloc’s efforts to sanction Moscow over its invasion, and blasted attempts to hit Russia’s energy revenues that help finance the war. His government has frequently threatened to veto EU efforts to assist Ukraine.
On Saturday, Slovakia’s populist Prime minister Robert Fico said his country will stop providing emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine if oil is not flowing through the Druzhba by Monday. Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said earlier this week that Hungary, too, was exploring the possibility of cutting off its electricity supplies to Ukraine.
Not all of the EU’s 27 countries agreed to take part in the 90-billion-euro loan package for Kyiv. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic opposed the plan, but a deal was reached in which they did not block the loan and were promised protection from any financial fallout.
