India and Brazil Jumping Ship from the G20

Looks like the G20 is rapidly losing credibility, as core members Brazil and India have both spurned meetings this week ahead of the November summit in South Korea.  There are some interesting factors pushing emerging BRIC nations away from the bloc. From the Financial Times:

More and more, the story of the G20 is beginning to resemble that of the Doha round of trade negotiations and there can be few more insulting comparisons. Both were launched in the immediate aftermath of dislocating crises. The Doha Development Agenda, to give its full title, began in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks. The G20 started as a finance ministers’ grouping after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and became a heads of government affair after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. Both were supposed to address the needs of emerging markets in the world economy and had Brazil and India as participants in the inner core of negotiations.

But both had exaggerated claims made for their potential impact. Those, such as Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister, who made a career out of overstating the potential for Doha to boost growth and reduce poverty, simply adapted that rhetoric to the G20, suggesting it heralded a new age of international co-operation. But what countries did reduced the credibility of what they said. Repeated protestations from all sides that Doha was on the brink of a deal were belied by the simultaneous pursuit of bilateral trade deals, particularly by the US and European Union. Similarly, the recent resort to unilateral actions by a string of emerging markets – Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia – to stem currency appreciation betrays a lack of faith that the multilateral process can induce China to increase exchange rate flexibility.