Good morning. The Group of Seven summit enters its second day today in Kananaskis, Alta. It might bring back painful memories: Recall the calamitous wreck that was the last G7 meeting hosted by Canada, during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018.

Recall that viral picture of G7 leaders tensely surrounding a cross-armed Trump. Recall the tweet from Trump that retroactively tore up the joint communique and called then-prime minister Justin Trudeau “dishonest & weak.” (Note Trump’s use of the ampersand, which seems to elevate the term from a simple collection of two adjectives to a trademark compound phrase.)

This year, world leaders fear it could be worse. Wielding the mystical hammer of tariffs, Trump in his second coming is more vindictive and practised – and feels more invincible. There is no joint communique planned. If the world doesn’t end on Tuesday, we’ll all break out the cigars.

But first, the most recent updates:

Trade: Canada and Britain commit to trade talks after a weekend meeting between Prime Ministers Mark Carney and Keir Starmer

Exports: New data from the Port of Montreal confirms Canadian exporters are increasingly shifting from U.S. to overseas markets

Technology: Vista and Blackstone quietly bought Assent, valuing Ottawa compliance software company at $1.3-billion

Small business: Buy Canadian movement sours sales at one Edmonton candy store

• Today: PMO says Carney is expected to hold a one-on-one meeting with Trump at the G7 summit this morning
• Also today: Housing starts data for the month of May will be available, plus Canadian Real Estate Association is set to release its monthly statistics package.
• Tomorrow: the Bank of Canada will publish a summary of the deliberations that took place ahead of its interest rate decision on June 4.
• Notable earnings today include Lennar Corp.

I’m Ethan Lou, the opinion editor in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business. Do you see the sky darkening? Do you hear the drumbeats of the trade war (and not to mention the actual war)? This year’s G7 meeting happens amid a most gloomy backdrop.

There is the stated agenda of the meeting, which includes building energy security and partnerships for infrastructure investments. Then there is the real agenda, which is unspoken, ironic and, frankly, to borrow a word from the man at the centre of it all, “sad!”

The real agenda of the G7 summit is to please a mercurial and powerful man who hates such international meetings and bodies, and the sort of world they underpin – yet who is the most important pillar to such bodies and that world.

And it’s not just the tariffs. Growth rates among G7 countries are sliding toward zero, the contributing columnist John Rapley writes. These rich countries are still rich. But for how long will they remain so? Notable invitees to the summit include the leaders of India and Saudi Arabia, newer engines of growth (though the latter decided not to attend). Even the G7 realizes that all the world has changed, and the long years of its life are verging on being utterly spent.

“One possibility that Western leaders and their voters therefore need to face is that high growth may never come,” Rapley writes.

Meanwhile, John Stackhouse, senior vice-president in the office of the chief executive at Royal Bank of Canada, says the G7 should focus on natural gas.

“This has become a decade of disruption for energy, especially for natural gas. We saw in the early days of the Ukraine war how Russia weaponized gas, signalling what aggression can do to markets,” Stackhouse, a former Globe and Mail editor-in-chief, writes with co-authors.

“A concrete strategy for governments and industry begins with a G7 declaration of support for natural gas as an essential bridge fuel to a lower emissions economy.”

There is wisdom to that. Natural gas is specific and of the moment. With the renewed Israel-Iran conflict, energy insecurity rears its head again. As Stackhouse writes, “gas-rich Qatar, directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran, accounts for nearly 20 per cent of global LNG exports.” Gas is also relatively uncontroversial (“relatively” does carry quite a bit of weight in that sentence).

Recall the various trips foreign leaders took to Canada to seek our gas. At the G7 table, you’d find few voices disagreeing with the use of natural gas. Most importantly, it’s a subject that does not aggravate Trump. For the G7 to agree on natural gas is way more achievable than for it to agree on, say, tariff-free trade.

More reading:

• Day 1: As a group of the world’s most powerful leaders landed in Alberta, they came together in hopes of finding a common voice, but conflict persists.
• Campbell Clark: Can Carney be the Trump whisperer for a while?
• Also: In Kananaskis, a special security challenge: How to keep world leaders safe from grizzlies.