Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a Plenary Session on Geopolitical Issues

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you all for being here. I want to welcome all of you to the city of Atlanta here in Georgia, and this - what I hope will be a productive meeting today as we are - a critical moment. I would call it a moment of choosing, and I would say not just for my country, the United States of America, but frankly for the world.

We are facing a series of interconnected economic and geopolitical crises, many of which pose severe threats - severe threats to essential foundations of the global economic order. New disruptions and strains to global energy and food supplies - and food markets - to the global supply chain, trade, to freedom of navigation itself. And the G20 must work together to confront these threats, to strengthen our economic resilience, to safeguard our markets and the economies that they sustain.

The challenge we have - the challenges we have addressed during the presidency of President Trump are multifaceted and interconnected, and the solutions must be, too. Here we can help set the context for expanded geopolitical stability and the broader economic prosperity agenda that our leaders will tackle. As diplomats, as political leaders, we have a vital role. We are tasked, on behalf of the nations that we serve, to work together with one another to coordinate responses to emerging crises and to protect our shared interests. By translating our shared interest into practical cooperation and real action, we can reinforce global stability - and more importantly, we can deliver meaningful results for our citizens.

We have a lot to cover over the next two days. Briefly, in terms of the modality - the modalities, we're going to cover two issues in this plenary session: freedom of navigation and food security. I'll introduce the topic and turn to the next speaker. We'll go around the table; we'll do it in alphabetical order. I would ask if you can - I know these are complex and nuanced topics, but if we could limit it to three minutes or so for each intervention, because if we don't then we'll be here for a long period of time. And then I'll wrap up at the end of each topic as we move on to the next topic.

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