United States President Donald Trump disclosed that he would postpone a meeting of the G7 group of nations until the fall this year, only a day after German chancellor Angela Merkel announced she would not be present at the summit unless the situation of the global health crisis improves.

Trump made the surprising announcement on board the Air Force One when he flew back from Florida to Washington DC, where he watched the launch of the SpaceX at the Kennedy Space Center.

Trump said he plans to invite four more non-member countries, including Russia. Speaking to members of the press, aboard Air Force One, Trump said he hopes to broaden the annual meeting of the globe's economic powerhouses to include India, Australia, South Korea, and Russia, a pooled report bared.

The Group of Seven nations, formerly called G8, included Russia until its membership status was scrapped in 2014 over its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine.

Merkel's rejection of accepting Trump's invitation is the latest in a series of issues of the two leaders' complicated relationship. Trump has repeatedly denounced the German government, and Merkel in particular, regarding sensitive matters ranging from the country's trade surplus to its defense acquisitions and NATO commitment.

Merkel has sharply and openly resisted the unilateral approach of the Trump administration to a host of foreign policy sticking points, from its nuclear agreement with Iran to climate change.

Trump said he is postponing the G7 summit because he doesn't feel that as "a G7 it properly represents what is going on in the world." In its current format, the G7 is a "very outdated group of countries," Trump said, as quoted by Aljazeera news.

Trump described the newly-expanded group as "G10 or G11," and said that he had "roughly" tackled the idea with the leaders of the new nations.

The decision is a critical turn for Trump, who sought to host the summit in Washington as proof that the United States was returning to normal after the epidemic, which has claimed the lives of over 103,000 Americans to date.

The G7 is comprised of the US, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, the UK, Germany, and the European Union.

White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah stated that the president wanted to gather some of the US' traditional allies and those hit hard by the virus to talk about the future of China.

The heads of state of the world's biggest economies were set to meet from June 10 to 12 in the US, but the current health crisis has now derailed those plans.