Trump Says U.S. Will Boycott G20 in South Africa

President Donald Trump declared on Friday that no U.S. government officials will attend this year's Group of 20 summit in South Africa due to the country's treatment of white farmers.

Trump had already announced he would not attend the annual summit for heads of state from the world's major and emerging economies. Vice President JD Vance was set to attend in the president's place, but a person familiar with Vance's plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his schedule, said he would also no longer travel to the summit.

"It is a total disgrace that the G20 is being held in South Africa," Trump stated on his social media platform. In his post, the president cited "abuses" against Afrikaners—the descendants of Dutch settlers—including violence and death, as well as the confiscation of their lands and farms.

The Trump administration has long accused the South African government of allowing white Afrikaner farmers, who are a minority, to be persecuted and attacked. When it restricted the number of refugees admitted annually into the United States to 7,500, the administration indicated that the majority would be white South Africans, who, it claimed, face discrimination and violence in their home country.

However, the South African government has expressed surprise at the accusations of discrimination, noting that, by and large, white people in the country have a much higher standard of living than Black residents, more than three decades after the end of the white-minority apartheid system.

The country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said he has communicated to Trump that the information about the alleged discrimination and persecution of Afrikaners is "completely false."

Nevertheless, the White House has maintained its criticism of the South African government. This week, during a speech on the economy in Miami, Trump stated that South Africa should be expelled from the Group of 20.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted a G20 meeting for foreign ministers because its agenda was focused on diversity, inclusion, and combating climate change.