"I think going into the summit, there's a broad consensus among the G-20 as to what needs to be done in these areas to restore growth and regulatory reform efforts," Froman said.
Steven Schrage, who holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at CSIS, predicted that any differences would be papered over. "If there are big disagreements, they'll have kind of innocuous language that kind of muddles the differences," he said.
At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit that follows the economic meetings by a couple of days, Obama will encounter another point of difference: He wants increased military commitments in Afghanistan. But NATO leaders have been signaling that they aren't interested in dramatically increasing their troop presence.
Launching into major diplomatic meetings just two months into the Obama administration, with the president's economic team still being assembled, has its risks.
But the summit dates were set before Obama took office, and some analysts think the timing actually helps him turn the page from the old American foreign policy to the new.
"What Obama has been saying is, 'We want to listen; we want to talk,' " said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and former National Security Council senior director for Russia, who is now at the Brookings Institution. "There may be some advantage to not having our plan set in concrete."
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cparsons@tribune.com
