Trump at G7: From skipping meetings to lavishing praise on Johnson and backing Putin’s return, the president's chaotic summit

Republican claims he is an environmentalist despite missing key climate discussion

Donald Trump has wrapped up a contentious weekend of meetings at the G7 in France, where he made headlines on issues ranging from his trade war with China, to climate change, to his long standing interest in re-admitting Russia to the international group.

The US president concluded his latest international appearance — which he described as “successful” and full of “tremendous unity” — with a lengthy press conference, where he attacked Barack Obama, heaped praise on Boris Johnson, and spoke in favour of returning Vladimir Putin to the G7.

At one point, he even claimed himself to be an environmentalist because, as a private businessman, he had been forced to comply with environmental regulations — regulations he has, as president, largely pushed to eliminate.

When asked about the ongoing US-China trade war, Mr Trump said he believes his counterparts in Beijing want to strike a deal.

“China wants to make a deal,” he said. “And I tell this to President Xi [Jinping], who I really respect … I told him very strongly, I said ‘Look you’re making $500bn (£410bn) a year and stealing our intellectual property … We can’t make a 50-50 deal’.”

“If it’s not better,” he added, of a potential deal, “I don’t want to do business.”

The remarks came from a stage he had shared with French president Emmanuel Macron, who told the room that he was confident that they could work towards a new nuclear deal with Iran, after Mr Trump pulled the US out of a deal to limit nuclear enrichment in the country.

Mr Macron said that a surprise appearance by Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the sidelines of the Biarritz summit on Sunday had helped lay the foundation for potential talks between Mr Trump and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in the coming weeks — an idea Mr Trump said he is open to.

“If the circumstances were correct, I would certainly agree to that,” Mr Trump said.

Earlier in the weekend, Mr Trump had attracted attention after he failed to attend a meeting on climate change, and talks regarding the fires in the Amazon.

He later said that he missed those meetings because he was with Angela Merkel, and appeared to claim that the meetings were upcoming when asked by reporters — even though the event had just concluded.

Those meetings on the climate emergency had been placed at the heart of the summit, and reports from the US indicated that senior Trump aides had felt Mr Macron had focused on those issues — which Mr Trump has shown little interest in — in order to embarrass the American president.

Mr Macron said during the summit the Amazon was the “lungs” of the world, and claimed world leaders were committed to studying how to help the situation.

Mr Trump also touted his administration’s push for drilling oil in vast areas of the US that had previously been off limits.

“I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. I’ve made that wealth come alive,” Mr Trump said, before saying he would not squander that wealth on “dreams” like wind turbines.

Mr Trump also doubled down on his idea of hosting next year’s G7 summit at a his Trump Doral Resort in Miami, in spite of questions from the press about how he can assure the American people he is not making money through his presidency.

“I don’t want to make money. I don’t care about making money,” Mr Trump said, suggesting he thinks he will lose between $3bn and $5bn (£2.4 – £4bn) during his presidency.

But he plugged his resort anyway: “With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings – we call them ‘bungalows.’ We have incredible conference rooms.”