Trade deals not expected at G7 meeting, joint statement must serve US priorities, source says

By David Lawder

CALGARY (Reuters) -The U.S. Treasury does not anticipate any trade deal announcements as part of a Group of Seven finance leaders meeting this week in Canada, and will not agree to a joint communique unless it serves U.S. interests, a source briefed on U.S. participation in the meeting said.

The source told reporters on condition of anonymity that while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will interact with his Japanese counterparts in Banff, Alberta, additional trade discussions were expected to take place in Washington.

"I would not expect that we're going to be announcing anything at the G7 but we've made very substantial progress with a number of our G7 partners already" on trade, the source said.

Separately, a U.S. Treasury spokesperson said Bessent would seek to press G7 allies Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Italy and Germany to take steps to counteract the spillover effects from the policies of non-market economies including China.

Bessent, like his predecessor Janet Yellen, has consistently argued that China's state-led, export-driven economic model marked by massive subsidies and state-directed lending has fueled industrial overcapacity that is flooding the world with cheap goods, threatening jobs and companies in market economies like the G7 countries.

"The Secretary will push the G7 to continue to focus on rebalancing the global economy and addressing unfair economic policies that contribute to imbalances," the spokesperson said. "The G7 must work together to protect our workers and firms from China's unfair practices."

The source briefed on U.S. participation said that a joint statement from the G7 meeting would be positive as a "general principle," but that the language must be in line with the U.S. perspective.

"And certainly we're not inclined to do a communique just for the sake of doing communique. And so we're only going to sign up for such things the extent that it aligns with the administration's priorities," the source said.

Asked whether Moody's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating and concerns the growth of U.S. debt would be a feature of the G7 meetings, the source said that "no one" at the Treasury was concerned about the Moody's downgrade, repeating Bessent's comments over the weekend that credit ratings were a "lagging indicator" of U.S. fiscal health.

(Reporting by David Lawder in Calgary; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Stephen Coates)