US Treasury Secretary John Snow and fellow finance chiefs from wealthy nations gathered in luxury yesterday to mull how to boost global expansion while keeping a lid on tensions among themselves.
The first meeting this year of Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers - which opened formally yesterday with a dinner and wraps up late today with a closing statement - will play out against a backdrop of rising worries over the slumping value of the US dollar.
Europe, concerned that its recovery may be jeopardised by a soaring euro that hurts exports, wants to highlight record US trade and budget deficits, which it feels create imbalances throughout the global economy.
Japan seeks a tacit endorsement of its practice of intervening in currency markets to keep the yen from rising and thus hurting its exports and said beforehand it will tell G7 partners it plans to keep on doing so.
There is enough divergence among the G7 members - the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan - that no substantive deal on slowing the dollar's decline is likely.
Mr Snow earlier this week again reiterated his currency mantra, telling a congressional panel the Mr Bush administration supports a strong dollar - carefully adding that its value is best set in competitive markets.
The dollar has been punished by those markets in recent months and over the past two years has fallen some 29 per cent against the euro, 20 per cent against the yen and about 20 per cent against the British pound.
Instead, US officials have said they want to talk about strategies to boost global growth, so the United States would no longer be the sole source of consumer demand.
"The agenda for growth, which is a very important initiative launched in Dubai back in September, will be the focus of the policy discussions at the G7 meetings," Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor said this week. That document committed each country to take steps to spur growth, from pension reforms to more open labour markets.
Even if there is little or no change in the Dubai communique's call for "more flexibility in exchange rates" - which markets have come to believe is the most likely outcome - the closing statement today has a range of topics to report upon.
At their dinner yesterday, the ministers discussed ways to further choke off the access of groups that sponsor terror to the world's banking system.
The United States wants other G7 members to back its proposal to increase the number of countries that agree to be checked annually by outside experts to make sure their financial systems are secure from such groups.
Another topic they were to touch on at the plush 80-year-old resort was how to encourage development in emerging economies.
Before the formal meeting today - in the tightly secured Spanish mission-style hotel - G7 participants will hear a presentation from an Iraqi delegation about efforts to rebuild its ravaged economy.
Mr Snow was to hold one-on-one meetings yesterday with British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, followed by European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and finance ministers from Canada, Germany and France.
He will meet with the Japanese and Iraqi representatives early today.
Mr Trichet said again on Thursday the ECB was "concern(ed) about exaggerated exchange rate movements" but emphasised he was not foreshadowing his expectations for the G7 meeting.
With the United States headed into presidential elections in November, Mr Bush administration officials are enjoying the benefits to the US economy from a declining dollar, which already has begun to show up in increased manufacturing.
Mr Snow has avoided saying so directly, but on Thursday Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke underlined an official feeling that the dollar's decline was a positive development that posed no threat to US interests.
"The dollar has come down and I think that will pass through over time to a strengthening of our export markets and will help us recover some of this trade deficit that we have been facing... (but) I think that its direct impact on inflation is going to be modest," Mr Bernanke told a group of investment professionals in South Carolina.