Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived in South Korea on Wednesday ahead of the G20 meetings, where trade and currency issues are expected to be at the top of the agenda.
Harper is hoping to lead a plan to revitalize the global economy through fiscal and employment growth, while avoiding a looming currency war.
Both the U.S. and China are seen as having highly undervalued currencies, CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said from Seoul.
"The prime minister is hoping to try to get the Chinese leader and the American leader to come together on a coordinated plan with trade targets," he said, but "people are not hopeful that's going to happen at this summit."
Harper is also expected to attend Remembrance Day ceremonies along with the prime ministers of Australia and Britain, prior to the opening of the summit on Thursday.
Discussions at the G20 are expected to be tense. While the leaders will likely agree in principle to keep their books from going too far into the red, agreement on specific measures is less likely.
The recent move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to pump US$600 billion into a bond-purchase program has raised concern among emerging markets.
"They've been printing more money and keeping their interest rates low, which has been lowering the value of the dollar to help their own exports and make it more expensive for imports to come into the country," Fife said. "The whole point of this is to try and create jobs at home."
The move could trigger a round of competitive exchange-rate devaluations, better known as a currency war.
G20 members Canada, the U.S., and others are also wary of China, which has undervalued its currency to boost its own export-driven economy and manufacturing sector.
That has left the U.S. and others with a huge trade deficit with China.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said ahead of the talks she isn't interested in discussing fixed export targets to level the playing field. Germany has a strong trade surplus, meaning it exports much more than it imports.
Daniel Schwanen, an economist at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said Canada has a lot at stake at the summit.
Canada's trade deficit expanded last month, which he described as "a very serious issue" for the national economy.
"We have to grease the wheels and make sure that people do come to an agreement, and that we don't let trade in particular collapse as a result of all these disputes," Schwanen told CTV News Channel.
"Without wanting to appear to do so the U.S. has thrown the gauntlet before China, among others, to say ‘what are you going to do about this?'"
Following the summit, Harper will travel to Japan to discuss free trade and economic growth with the other 20 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
