BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will wrap up a global summit on Saturday with high-stakes talks expected to determine whether they can begin defusing a damaging trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
With the United States and China locked in growing disputes over commerce and security that have raised questions about the future of their relationship, Trump and Xi are due to sit down for dinner at the end of a two-day gathering of world leaders in Buenos Aires.
The first day of the G20 summit offered glimmers of hope for progress between Washington and Beijing despite Trump’s earlier threat of new tariffs, which would increase tensions already weighing on global financial markets.
But on the eve of what is seen as the most important meeting of U.S. and Chinese leaders in years, both sides said differences remained, and the outcome of the talks were uncertain.
This year’s summit has proved to be a major test for the Group of 20 industrialized nations, whose leaders first met in 2008 to help rescue the global economy from the worst financial crisis in seven decades.
With a rise in nationalist sentiment in many countries, the G20, which accounts for two-thirds of the global population and 85 percent of the global economy, faces doubts over its ability to deal with trade tensions and other geopolitical differences among its members.
Delegates from G20 nations worked late into the night to seek agreement on the summit’s final communique, which in past years has been worked out well in advance.
European officials said on Saturday that a draft of the document committed to reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has been engulfed in institutional crisis just when
