Opinion | In Osaka, the G20 summit takes a back seat to the Donald Trump show

Phew! Osaka and the G20 – and the rest of the world – survived the passage of the “Trumphoon”, although it left a bill running to millions of dollars for costs, disruption of lives, closure of schools, traffic dislocation and general chaos visited on Japan, not to speak of important structural damage to the pretence of global governance.

US President Donald Trump’s press conference after the G20 summit demonstrated the whirling damage he causes. His opening statement was a gush of exaggerations, half-truths, fantasies and lies: every deal before he arrived was the worst in the world, including Nafta and the World Trade Organisation; his election had turned the US economy and the stock market into the “hottest” the world has ever seen; he could fix any problem in an instant, immigration solved overnight, for one, but for the Democrats’ opposition.

But just when you think he might be certifiable, Trump showed that his bluster is part of his shtick as a real estate salesman with an increasingly opportunistic eye on re-election in 2020.

He reduced the G20 to a sideshow to his series of bilateral meetings with other leaders, including Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdogan.