Biden will meet with world leaders who have already moved on to Trump

Lima, Peru
CNN
—

As President Joe Biden’s aides planned his visit to South America this week for a pair of leadership summits, two very different scenarios were at play.

In one, Biden arrived as the confident statesman polishing a legacy and preparing to hand off to his vice president. In the second, he was confronted by anxious world leaders and new questions about whether, as he had spent four years asserting, “America was back.”

He wanted the first one. He got the last one.

Denied a victory lap on the world stage, Biden will instead use his time in Peru and Brazil this week to reflect and look ahead. No longer viewed on the world stage as the US president who defeated Donald Trump — and his “America First” ideology — forever, Biden will find himself in the midst of leaders who are already moving on.

Many of his counterparts have been banking on cultivating — or in many cases re-cultivating — relationships with Trump, angling for meetings in Palm Beach while in the hemisphere.

The summits carry an inevitable awkwardness given the short time Biden has left in office and the sea change that awaits when he leaves. Leaders are talking among themselves about how to insulate their economies and respond to the threats Trump has already made, but Biden administration officials have been largely excluded from those talks.

“It’s very clear that this is the only thing on their mind,” said a senior US official. Despite leaders gathered in Lima and Rio de Janeiro, “the only thing anyone can think about is what’s happening in DC.”

Aside from the summit hosts, Biden will meet only one other leader one-on-one: Chinese President Xi Jinping. He will hold trilateral talks with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, the latter of which said this week it was dusting off its golf clubs in preparation for a potential round with Trump.

Biden’s entourage will represent a slimmed down staffing from previous foreign trips, with a relatively easy schedule and low stakes – and the desire of many to start looking for new jobs.

Traditionally, the APEC and G20 summits, which Biden is attending this weekend, are times for US presidents to confer with potential trade partners and military allies to jointly confront a range of global issues. However, Trump disliked these types of summits and asked aides in advance about the necessity of attending.

Biden, who met with Trump for two hours Wednesday at the White House, likely won’t be able to offer much reassurance to allies wondering what’s in store for the next four years. It is also not clear whether foreign leaders will be so interested in his perspective.

Despite his proud declarations during his first trip abroad in 2021 that “America is back” after the Trump years, it is now clear that a majority of American voters chose an alternative path in Trump, whose first presidency caused strained alliances and was asked about the United States. management.

As Biden prepared to leave after his meeting with Trump, his top national security aide said his message to the world would not change, despite Trump’s election.

“He’s going to have the same message that he’s had for four years as president, which is that he believes America’s allies are critical to America’s national security. They make us stronger. They multiply our capabilities. They take a burden off our shoulders,” said US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

“He will make the case to our allies and frankly to our adversaries that America stands by its alliances and invests in its alliances,” he continued. “That will be his message. It’s a message of principle. It’s a message of practicality. And that’s been one of the reasons for President Biden’s life.”

Instead, leaders of both APEC and G20 countries are expected to promote initiatives that will allow developing countries to invest more profitably at home at lower borrowing rates to prevent them from turning into surpluses for countries like China. And the US is expected to tout more robust development funding from the World Bank, which Trump supporters have threatened to withdraw from.

“Some in the Trump administration might not care about it,” a senior administration official said of authorizing more World Bank grants. “But it’s a very good way to make sure the problems don’t wash up on our shores.”

But elsewhere, U.S. officials are not trying to lock other nations into deals or partnerships to try to lead the new administration from the front. Allies have expressed gratitude for Biden’s predictable leadership, but are now bracing for Trump’s tsunami.

“We’re not putting in poison pills,” the senior official told CNN. “Other countries wouldn’t even want to agree to something that would get the relationship off to a rocky start with the new audience.”

What assurances Biden can offer that would last beyond January 20 is not clear. In the end, Biden’s opponents were never quite sure of his insistence that America would not return to those days. Even when he told members of the G7 that America was back, their first question was, “How long?”

In Europe, waves of populism prompted leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron to take a skeptical look at any of Biden’s assurances that Trump’s political brand was a thing of the past. He spent much of Biden’s presidency arguing for a more self-sufficient Europe that could provide for its own defense, a mission that has only escalated since Trump’s election.

After Biden withdrew from the presidential race this summer, many of his colleagues sent warm messages thanking him for his leadership. But privately, many who had met Biden up close at summits and meetings over the previous year — and witnessed what they said were clear signs of age — wondered how he could have made a re-election bid in the first place.

Biden is not the first sitting Democrat to travel to Peru after a Trump victory. Then-President Barack Obama traveled to the same summit in the same city after Trump’s shock victory in 2016 and found himself confronted by Pacific nation leaders eager for some guidance on where US foreign policy might be headed.

Among the most interested was Xi, who asked Obama at the end of a long meeting about the incoming president-elect. Obama suggested he wait and see how Trump performed once in office.

“We prefer to have a good relationship with the United States,” Xi replied, according to an account in a book by Ben Rhodes, a top Obama aide. “It’s good for the world. But every action will have a reaction. And if an immature leader throws the world into chaos, then the world will know who to blame.”

Xi will meet Biden on Saturday in Lima for what officials describe as a “bookend conversation” that will close out Biden’s time in office. But after dealing with Trump for four years already, it’s not clear how much advice Xi will need this time around.