WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden begins his six-day visit to Peru and Brazil on Thursday for the final major international summits of his presidency, while world leaders turn their attention to what Donald Trump’s return to the White House means for their countries.
The visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru and stops in the Amazon rainforest and at the Group of 20 leaders summit in Brazil offer Biden one of his last chances as president to meet with heads of state he’s worked with over the years.
But world leaders’ eyes are firmly affixed on Trump.
They already are burning up Trump’s phone with congratulatory talks and taking stock of his picks for key national security and foreign policy positions.
At least one leader, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, is dusting off golf clubs he hasn’t used in eight years, just in case the chance to bond with the golf-loving Trump should present itself.
This is not going to be a swan song for Biden,” said Erin Murphy, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Not only is he a lame duck, but a super lame duck because his successor is going to have very different policies.
White House officials insist that Biden’s visits to APEC and the G20 will be substantive, with talks on climate issues, global infrastructure, counternarcotic efforts and one-on-one meetings with global leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, and a joint meeting with South Korea’s Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
“He’s going to have the same message that he’s had for four years as president, which is that he believes that America’s allies are vital to America’s national security,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters after Biden hosted Trump for Oval Office talks Wednesday. “They make us stronger. They multiply our capabilities. They take a burden off of our shoulders.”
That wide-ranging discussion between the Democratic president and the Republican president-elect touched on the conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine.
“I wanted — I asked — for his views, and he gave them to me,” Trump told The New York Post after his conversation with Biden.
Sullivan indicated that White House officials also are making clear to Trump’s team that the delicate U.S.-China relationship is the “paramount priority for the incoming administration.”
Trump has announced that he will nominate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state and that Florida Rep. Mike Waltz will be his national security adviser. Both Republican lawmakers are noted China hawks.
The White House had been working for months to arrange the meeting with Xi, whose country is the United States’ most prominent economic and national security competitor.
For Xi, front of mind will be Trump’s campaign promise to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports. White House officials avoided commenting in detail about how Biden will approach conversations with Xi and other world leaders about Trump.
Those officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and not lose sight on finding an end to the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. That includes bringing home hostages held by Hamas for more than 13 months.
Between the summits, Biden will visit the Amazon rainforest, the first such visit by a sitting U.S. president.
James Bosworth, founder of the Latin America-focused political consultancy Hxagon, said Biden will use one of his last big moments in the international spotlight “to reassure the world that transitions of power are normal for democracies.”
“Biden will get public applause and praise, even as world leaders nervously await the transition,” Bosworth said.
Biden’s meeting with Xi will likely be the most consequential moment during the American president’s time in South America.
It will be their first conversation since a phone call in April. They last met face to face on a California estate on the sidelines of last year’s APEC summit.
Biden has tried to maintain a steady relationship with Xi even as the U.S. administration repeatedly has raised concerns about what it sees as malign action by Beijing.
U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry to use against Ukraine. The Biden administration last month imposed sanctions on two Chinese companies accused of directly helping Russia build long-range attack drones.
Tensions flared last year after Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed across the intercontinental United States. And the Biden administration has criticized Chinese military assertiveness toward Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan.
Sullivan said he expected Biden also would raise a U.S. investigation into an alleged Chinese hacking operation targeting cellphones used by Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and people associated with Democrat Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
During the campaign, Trump spoke of his personal connection with Xi, which started out well during the Republican’s first term before becoming strained over disputes about trade and the origins of COVID-19.
In a congratulatory message to Trump, Xi called for the U.S. and China to manage their differences and get along in a new era, according to Chinese state media.
Biden finds himself in a position somewhat similar to when then-President Barack Obama traveled to Peru in 2016 for the annual APEC leaders gathering soon after Trump’s first White House victory.
World leaders peppered Obama with questions about what Trump’s surprise win would mean. Obama urged leaders to be patient and see how things would go under Trump, who ran on a protectionist, “America First” agenda.
“Obama got a lot of questions about Trump, and his message was to wait and see … because we didn’t know Donald Trump,” said Victor Cha, a National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration. “Now we’re in a very different situation where we do know what the first Trump administration was like.”
