On the Global South front, just as the G20 was hosted by South America, the two key regional powers, Brazil and Argentina -- one a BRICS member and the other a potential BRICS Plus member -- instead of shining, presented a sorry picture. Argentina, with its economy in tatters thanks to a neoliberal puppet, and Brazil, totally humiliated on the brink of being run by a cartoonish neo-fascist, were both prostrated in total submission to the "indispensable nation."
There are some fascinating nuances, however. Argentina's neoliberal President Mauricio Macri is really a hyper-multilateralist, pro-free trade, and cooperation proponent in every international forum but his friend, Trump, was instrumental in getting the IMF to take Argentina to the cleaners once again.
Macri has excellent relations with the notorious multi-lateralists, China and the EU. When the White House claimed that Buenos Aires agrees that China's trade policies are "predatory," Argentine diplomats immediately denied it.
No wonder, as Argentina's fourth nuclear power plant will be financed by China, at $8 billion. China will become Argentina's biggest non-institutional lender after a currency swap doubles the nation's credit line to $18.7 billion.
The Militarized Evangelical Banana Republic, formerly known as Brazil, once again, did not fail to deceive. French President Emmanuel Macron -- already embattled by the Yellow Vest insurrection across France -- reiterated that a free trade deal between the EU and Mercosur, under negotiation for nearly 20 years now, can only be clinched if the Brazilian government, under Jair Bolsonaro, does not ditch the Paris climate change Accord.
Prior to the G20, Bolsonaro abdicated from hosting the UN summit on climate change in 2019 -- as Brazil may leave the Paris Accord to the benefit of the powerful agro-business lobby ravaging the Amazon rain-forest. For Macron, self-styled leader not only of the EU but global environment, that's a major red line. And that will translate into a French veto on a deal with Mercosur. No wonder Macri has got to be furious.
Enter the R20
Crucially, Xi Jinping once again stressed in Buenos Aires that Beijing supports "necessary reforms" to the World Trade Organization (WTO). But these should protect the "interests" of developing countries -- and China still defines itself as a developing country.
That brings us to a road map that should please the Global South.
Yaroslav Lissovolik, former Duetsche Bank and IMF official, at the essential Valdai Discussion Club, which he directs, proposed a horizontal format to coordinate trade and infrastructure integration: namely, an "R20" -- as in Regional 20 -- that "would bring together the largest regional heavyweights in the world economy represented by 10 regional blocks."
This "connectivity track" within the R20 format, as Lissovolik describes it, might become the essential platform interlocking many current infrastructure projects, from the vastly ambitious -- and well funded -- Chinese-led New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the still quite vague Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), driven by Japan and India.
It's not about nations; it's about regional trade blocks. They might well become the uber-building blocks of a post-G20 world after a definitive, world system-shattering moment is brought upon us: when the petroyuan eclipses the dollar.
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