 "France's President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz attend a plenary session on the opening day of the G20 Leaders' Summit at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, November 22, 2025. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/Pool")
G20 nations approved South Africa’s summit declaration with full consensus, even as US President Donald Trump boycotted the event. Speaking on Saturday (Nov 22), South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — host of this weekend’s gathering of G20 leaders — stressed that achieving unanimous agreement on the final statement was crucial, despite the United States’ decision not to participate.
Sources familiar with the discussions said G20 envoys drafted the leaders’ declaration on Friday without any US input — a move that a senior White House official criticised as “shameful.” The draft reportedly retained references to climate change, an issue on which the Trump administration has long clashed with other member states, including by questioning the scientific consensus on human-driven global warming.
In his opening remarks at the Johannesburg summit, Ramaphosa said there had been “overwhelming consensus and agreement” that adopting the declaration should be among the first tasks of the meeting. He thanked all delegations for working “in good faith” with South Africa to produce “a worthy G20 outcome document,” adding that nothing should be allowed to “diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency.”
“We should not allow anything to diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency,” he added.
What the G20 summit declaration says
The G20 summit declaration states: “We emphasise the importance of strengthening multilateral cooperation to address existing and emerging risks to the global economy.”
The document further adds, “We will work for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the occupied Palestinian territory and Ukraine.”
Why US President Donald Trump rejected South Africa’s G20 agenda
US President Donald Trump and his administration chose to boycott the G20 summit, claiming that South Africa was treating white citizens “unfairly and cruelly.”
President Trump also objected to the host nation’s agenda, which focused on promoting unity and supporting developing countries in tackling climate disasters, transitioning to clean energy, and managing unsustainable debt burdens.