G-20 Summit begins, jobs a priority
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the G-20 Summit morning plenary session. (London Summit/FLICKR)
BY LESLIE PATTON – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE
Soon the world will have a plan for how to recover from the economic crisis. At least that’s the idea as the London Summit commences in at the Excel Centre in East London, drawing together the leaders of the G-20 countries.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is chairing the meeting, said the “first duty” of the summit is to help ordinary people who are suffering amidst the global financial disaster.
“We are within a few hours, I think, of agreeing [on] a global plan for economic recovery and reform and I think the significance of this is that we are looking at every aspect,” Prime Minister Brown said.
The U.S. Business and Industries Council, allied with domestic manufacturers, called on President Obama to make U.S. trade deficit reduction a top priority Thursday.
If the U.S. does not increase its domestic consumption and lower exports, “lasting global recovery will be impossible,” said Kevin L. Kearns, president of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit, in a press release.
Answering questions in a midday news conference, Prime Minister Brown said that jobs were a top priority and that the summit leaders plan to make an extra $1 trillion available to aid the global economy. This would in turn increase consumer confidence and help people both stay in and get new jobs, he said.
“People will be surprised by the scale of resources we are making available,” Prime Minister Brown said, emphasizing that leaders are focused on the needs of individual citizens.
“This injection of $250 billion to keep trade rolling forward…is a substantial boost to global trade,” Prime Minister Brown said, noting that summit leaders will resist protectionist tendencies.
Kearns, however, is skeptical of the plan. “In general what we seem to be doing is trying to recreate a world economic system that was massively out of balance,” he said. Kearns called the global trade system “broken.”
“You can keep a patient on life support but there’s no improvement to the patient if you pump $250 billion into the feeding tube,” Kearns said.
A final press conference is planned for Thursday following the afternoon plenary session.
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Tags: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, G-20 Summit, global trade, jobs, London, Obama
