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US presidents have always spoken at the end of the G20 summit - Trump didn't

As the Group of 20 summit wrapped up on Saturday in Hamburg, Germany, some attendees stepped up to address journalists.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood beside French President Emmanuel Macron, answering questions.

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US isolated on climate at G20 summit

In a rare public admission of disagreement, leaders from the world's leading economies broke with US President Donald Trump on climate policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used his time to suggest that US President Donald Trump "agreed" that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 US election.

Leaders from Turkey, Britain, Canada and Spain also stepped up to the microphone.

Conspicuously absent: Donald Trump. He offered no formal remarks at the program's end and took no questions from the media.

The White House did not respond to an email asking for comment on President Trump's absence.

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Since 2008, 11 other G20 summits have been held and the US president has spoken to reporters at the end of each one, according to a review of White House archives.

In St Petersburg, Barack Obama discussed a way forward on Syria. In Antalya, Turkey, he spoke about the terrorist attacks in Paris and international efforts to curb extremism. At his last G20 summit, Obama made a case for the US bank bailouts, saying "we came to Seoul to continue the work that has taken us from London to Pittsburgh to Toronto. We worked together to pull the global economy back from catastrophe. To avoid the old cycles of boom and bust that led to that crisis, we committed ourselves to growth that is balanced and sustained, including financial reform and fiscal responsibility. The actions we took were not always easy or popular. But they were necessary."

George W. Bush also spoke at the end of the inaugural G20 meeting in Washington. In his comments, he defended the government bailout of foundering banks.

Not every leader attending the G20 summit addresses the media, but many do. As Heribert Dieter, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, explained, leaders often use this time to defend key decisions and offer up their narrative of what happened.

"Leaders seem to have a strong interest to tell their story," he wrote in an email. "Of course, they are doing that for domestic consumption," he added, not for an international audience.

Dieter suggested that Trump's decision not to address the media fits in with a broader theme of the G20: Trump's intentional, defiant isolation from the rest of the world.

"Trump seems to think that his voters are not interested in international conferences anyway," Dieter writes. Indeed, at the normally staid G20, Trump clashed with world leaders on issues such as climate change and trade.

"The discussions are very difficult. I don't want to talk around that," Merkel said. She also rejected Trump's scepticism about the value of sweeping free-trade agreements and suggested that we need trade that is free and fair. European leaders have warned of a "trade war" if the Trump administration moves to change rules about importing steel.

Washington Post