US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will make his first international trip this weekend after the midterm elections dealt Republicans a severe blow and raised questions about how the Trump administration’s policies, like the Iran war, helped Democrats seize control of Congress.
The State Department said Friday that Rubio would leave this weekend to attend a Group of 7 (G7) foreign ministers meeting in France.
He will have plenty of opportunities to explain whether President Donald Trump will adjust his often-aggressive approach to both allies and foes in the aftermath of massive Republican losses in Tuesday’s vote.
In a terse statement, the department said Rubio would use the meeting to “advance American interests in engagements with his G7 counterparts.” The top US diplomat is seen by many as presenting a gentler side to Trump’s approach, but there has been speculation — that he and aides have vehemently denied — that he might choose to leave the administration early to prepare for a 2028 presidential run.
The G7 meetings on Monday and Tuesday follow a larger diplomatic gathering that Rubio hosted in Atlanta just last weekend for G20 foreign ministers — a meeting that produced little in the way of consensus on any of the major issues the world is confronting. The Atlanta meeting, which included Russia and China, ended without a joint communique and instead a chairman’s statement from Rubio.
The G7, which comprises the world’s biggest industrialised democracies rather than the 20 largest global economies, is made up entirely of US allies — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.