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It’s hard to imagine the G7 reprising its heroics today. This year’s assembly includes too many saboteurs to be taken seriously as rescue team.

Germany is on the brink of recession. It has a huge trade surplus that implies it could be a bigger source of global demand, and it borrows for essentially nothing. Yet it still refuses to cut taxes or attempt any other form of fiscal stimulus out of fear of running a budget deficit.

Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, is bent on quitting the European Union on Oct. 31, come what may. Italy’s most powerful politician, Matteo Salvini, leader of the populist League party, chose this moment to trigger a political crisis, even though the International Monetary Fund reckons his country is teetering on the edge of its own downturn.

And of course, the G7 has done nothing to contain the biggest threat to the global economy, even though he has attended the meetings annually since being elected president of the United States in 2016. Stocks dropped (again) on Friday after Donald Trump tweeted that “we don’t need China” and the U.S. would be “better off without them.” He was commenting on the publication of the American imports that China will punish if the White House goes ahead with new duties on Chinese goods.

Trump’s trade wars have sucked the life out of the global economy, and America’s allies have proven powerless to do anything about it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Montreal this week that he would tell the G7 that, “we need to build a future where everyone can benefit from economic growth and where we invest to help the middle class,” a nice thought that will change nothing, since Angela Merkel, Johnson, Salvini and Trump all think their self-centred approaches to economic policy will achieve the same thing.