Mark “should be grateful to us." Emmanuel's “wife treats him extremely badly." Friedrich “doesn’t know what he’s talking about” and is “doing a terrible job.” It was "wrong” to think that Giorgia had "courage." Keir demonstrates “great stupidity” and “total weakness.”
This is how Donald Trump talks about his friends, the leaders of Europe, those with whom he boasts he is on a first-name basis. The trouble is to him, they represent alliances, something whose value he has questioned from the start. Now, since the last time the allies have been in the same room, he has personalized that disdain, throwing these insults at his counterparts—Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
With that daunting backdrop, the president is getting ready to travel on Monday to the French Alps for a G-7 summit almost guaranteed to be the most awkward and uncomfortable gathering since the annual meetings began in 1975. In Évian-les-Bains, along the Swiss border, Trump will be joined by the five leaders listed above, as well as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. In office for only seven months, Takaichi is the only one in the group who has yet to trigger the American president’s wrath.
Since returning to the Oval Office last year, Trump has relished skewering America’s friends while lavishing praise on adversaries. He has lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “nice gentleman,” a “great guy,” and a “terrific person,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “a great leader” and a “personal friend.”
Trump’s relations with the allies never have been warm, and his feelings about group summits are even more tepid, leaving Macron, this year’s host, not quite sure what to expect from the American president next week. That is especially true since Trump has failed to resolve his war against Iran before he sits down with the leaders who declined to rally behind a conflict they weren’t consulted about and didn’t want him to launch.
Victor Cha, who served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council and is a professor of government at Georgetown University, said the war “will be a very big question” at the summit because “it’s impacting the entire world and all the G-7 economies.” Cha said the recent friction on Iran worsens already existing tensions.
“There are constant residual tensions because of the tariffs and all the other disputes,” he said, adding, “There are some big differences there that won’t be easy to paper over.”
That does not mean, though, that any of those disputes will break out into a public spat. “You have European leaders quite united,” said Max Bergmann, formerly a top aide to Secretary of State John Kerry. “There’s not really a desire to have a full-on confrontation.”
Bergmann cast next week’s meeting “as sort of the awkward family gathering, whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas, where you have to go to your in-laws and there’s an uncle that you don’t quite like, and no one wants to have a confrontation, even if things get quite passive-aggressive at times.”
In all the allied capitals except for Tokyo, being seen as close to Trump is not regarded as politically helpful, he said, likening the current situation to the memorable scene in the 2003 movie Love, Actually when the British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, tells off the bullying U.S. president played by Billy Bob Thornton.
“That dynamic now plays really well in European domestic politics,” Bergmann said. “So you do have the kindling for a potential fire to emerge. I don’t think any leader particularly wants that, so I don’t expect it to happen. But some of that will be dependent on how Trump acts during this summit.”
In addition to the issues of Iran and trade policy, Trump finds himself at odds with the allies on Russia’s war against Ukraine. His abrupt denial of American support for Kyiv has forced European leaders to rally behind the embattled country. At last year’s summit, European leaders had not fully grasped Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine. But by now, they recognize it would be fruitless to lobby the president.
“If 2025 was the year that Europeans agreed that they had to bend the knee to Trump because of Ukraine … because Ukraine needed U.S. military support, we’re just in a different dynamic where Ukraine is not as dependent on the United States,” Bergmann said.
In just a year, the dynamic has shifted dramatically, with Europe now Ukraine's main benefactor as Trump sits on the sidelines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the summit. The White House has not yet confirmed if Trump will meet with him, a year after he snubbed Zelensky by leaving the summit before the Ukrainian leader arrived.
This year, however, Ukraine is much stronger politically and militarily. “The G-7 summit takes place against the backdrop of really significant shifts on the battlefield,” said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “For the first time since 2023, Ukrainian forces are reportedly regaining more territory than they’re losing, and they’ve been also achieving successes in targeting Russia’s railway infrastructure and logistics. The balance has tilted.”
Zelensky also has been busy diplomatically, meeting recently with the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany, and just this week with top U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “This is really important for the G-7 since it serves as a good omen ahead of the summit,” Snegovaya said.
To Snegovaya, a key question of the summit “is to what extent is Ukraine’s effort to showcase its stronger battlefield positions—together with the EU allies’ pressure—able to alter the U.S. posture.” In his dramatic Oval Office clash with Zelensky in February 2025, Trump chided the Ukrainian leader, telling him, “You don’t have the cards.” Sixteen months later, if he sits down with Trump in the Alps, Zelensky will be holding a much better hand—even if Trump is unlikely to ever call him by his first name.
