EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — President Donald Trump touched down in the lakeside French resort of Évian-les-Bains on Monday for the 52nd Group of Seven summit, arriving with a freshly announced Iran deal in hand but facing a familiar problem: a group of allies openly skeptical of his foreign policy and uncertain whether he will stay long enough to see the meeting through.
The three-day gathering brings together the leaders of the United States, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom at the Belle Époque-era Hôtel Royal on the shores of Lake Geneva. French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting his tenth G7 summit, deliberately postponed the opening of the meeting by several hours to allow Trump to attend a UFC event on the White House lawn marking the president’s 80th birthday.
For Macron, the calculus was simple. Trump walked out of last year’s summit in Kananaskis, Canada, early to manage the Iran conflict, and has a long history of treating multilateral gatherings as optional. The French president is holding out a dinner at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday evening as a reward if Trump lasts the full program. French officials privately say Trump is fond of the palace’s gilded interiors, an inducement they hope will keep him engaged.
An Iran deal, but lingering doubts
Trump arrived eager to claim vindication. Over the weekend, the White House announced a memorandum of understanding with Tehran that officials said would end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil flows. The president wrote on Truth Social that the agreement was complete and authorized the lifting of the US naval blockade, declaring, “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
But the deal that Trump is bringing to Évian is widely viewed by his fellow leaders as unfinished business. The agreement is set to be formally signed in Switzerland on Friday, and the details of the nuclear and sanctions-relief components remain to be negotiated. A senior US official said the administration was prepared to release “small antes” of frozen Iranian funds in the early phase of the peace process, before the final resolution of Tehran’s nuclear program.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the Iran war “a US humiliation.” French officials have made clear they expect intense, closed-door debate about how the Middle East moves forward even with an accord in place, particularly given questions about Iran’s compliance and the extensive mining of the strait during the conflict.
No joint communiqué expected
General expectations for the summit are unusually low. There are no plans for a joint communiqué, a once-standard outcome that has become increasingly difficult to produce in an era of transatlantic tension. Macron will instead issue a chairman’s summary of the discussions on Gaza and Iran, and concise communiqués after each working session on other topics.
That procedural retreat reflects the underlying reality: the seven leaders do not agree on much. The war in Ukraine, the future of Gaza, the structure of global trade, and the role of the United States in the postwar international order all feature on the agenda, but the gaps between positions are wide.
A coalition to secure the strait
One concrete area of potential cooperation is the security of the Strait of Hormuz once the deal is signed. France and Britain have both committed to forming a naval coalition to help clear Iranian mines and restore freedom of navigation, a plan Trump pushed for months while the strait was closed. On Tuesday, the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates will join the G7 for talks on the Middle East, invited by Macron.
But the economic damage from the war will dominate the conversation. The World Bank last week cut its forecast for global growth this year from 2.9 percent to 2.5 percent, the slowest pace since the Covid pandemic. The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates to a 31-year high, and the European Central Bank raised rates for the first time since 2023 amid fears of inflation climbing above 3 percent.
Trump, for his part, told Fox News last week that oil prices had not risen as much as predicted and added, “You know what I really love. I love the inflation.” That comment is unlikely to play well in Évian.
Trump’s wildcard presence
Whether Trump completes the summit remains the open question. Reports from Washington suggest the president has not been in a celebratory mood in recent days, and the temptation to insult his fellow leaders for declining to join the US effort to reopen the strait by force remains strong. Trump last year described Macron as “publicity seeking” and said, “Purposefully or not, Emmanuel Macron always gets it wrong.”
Macron has chosen not to take umbrage, framing an agenda designed to keep Trump at the table: Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, and a working session on artificial intelligence that aligns with the president’s commercial interests. The question now is whether even that careful choreography will be enough to hold a fractured alliance together for three days in the French Alps.