Summary

A three-day G7 summit was convened on June 11 in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It represented the first in-person meeting of G7 heads-of-government since COVID-19 emerged last year, and the summit was significant for other reasons as well. For one it represented the first high-profile opportunity for President Biden to stem the bleed in trans-Atlantic relations, which had withered for four years under the Trump administration. The summit was also an opportunity roll out the central plank of President Biden’s China policy, which stresses group action among like-minded democracies as a way to counter bilateral intimidation by Beijing. Cornwall was billed as a coming out party for a revamped G7, one imbued with a new sense of democratic purpose and new actionable imperatives in hitherto national purviews like tech, climate, and tax regulation.

Did the reality match up to the hype?