HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) – President Joe Biden was trying to rally regional cooperation against China on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit on Saturday as he faced a standoff in Washington over how to ensure the U.S. avoids non payment
Hoping to avoid an outcome that would shake the global economy and prove a boon for Beijing, Biden began his third day in Japan at the annual meeting of the world’s most powerful democracies with a staff briefing on the latest fits and starts in the showdown over how to raise the federal debt limit.
The president on Saturday also pressed ahead with meetings aimed at challenging China’s development in the Indo-Pacific, including with the so-called Quad partnership of the US, Australia, Japan and India.
Quad members had originally been scheduled to meet in Sydney next week, but rescheduled their meeting on the sidelines of the G-7 to allow Biden to return to Washington earlier on Sunday in hopes of finalizing a deal to raise the debt ceiling earlier. the US is running out of cash to pay its bills.
The shortened trip has reinforced a fundamental tension shaping Biden’s presidency: While he has tried to signal to the world that the United States is reclaiming the mantle of global leadership, at key moments, domestic dramas stand in the way.
The president has largely stayed out of the public eye at the summit, forgoing big public statements and leaving Friday’s leaders’ dinner early. Instead, he has spent time in front of a video monitor in a room off his hotel suite, where aides in Washington have kept him updated on the back and forth of talks about the debt limit
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged that world leaders have been pressing Biden on the debt limit in Washington. But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that while there was intense interest in how the president would resolve an internal standoff that has geopolitical ramifications, there was no panic, at least not yet.
“It’s not a hair-on-fire kind of situation,” he said.
Also on the sidelines of the summit, Biden was due to hold a bilateral meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese instead of what had been a planned visit to his country later this week for the Quad summit. US officials said the trip would be rescheduled for a later date and Biden has invited Albanese to Washington for a state visit as a consolation for the change.
The president also sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to take his place at the Pacific Island Nations Summit in Papua New Guinea on Monday. That presidential stop was also scrapped in order to get Biden back to Washington more quickly.
Biden’s visit would have been the first by an American president to the country. Pacific island nations are being aggressively courted by the United States and China as the two superpowers compete for influence in parts of the world where shipping lanes are vital.
In Hiroshima, Biden and other world leaders agreed on a shared framework for improving their own economic resilience, a recognition that high levels of trade with China have become more of a risk than an opportunity for mature economies
Sullivan said the G7 leaders would recognize that “we seek to cooperate with China on matters of mutual interest. And also that we will work to address our important concerns that we have with China in a number of areas.” He repeated a phrase often used by G7 leaders that the group seeks to “de-risk, not disengage from China.”
