US President Joe Biden as domestic agenda in limbo for global summit

Washington: President Joe Biden promised to show the world that democracy can work to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As he prepares to take that message forward in a pair of global summits, his case may hinge on what’s happening in Washington, where he races to finalize a major domestic legislative package. Used to be.

Heading first to Rome and then to Glasgow, Scotland, Biden will be pressured to deliver concrete ideas on preventing a global pandemic, spurring economic growth and halting the acceleration of climate change. Those stakes might seem a bit high for a pair of two-day celebrations that the global elite and their crews attend. But it is precisely in the slogan of the Group of 20 meeting in Rome: “People, Planet, Prosperity.”

President Biden, who had planned to deliver remarks to the East Room before leaving Washington on Thursday, has promised to align American diplomacy with the interests of the middle class. It has tied any success overseas to his efforts to get Congress to advance its environmental, tax, infrastructure and social policies. If Americans refuse to adopt them outright, the world may find it harder to commit to their stated goals, which risks one of Biden’s choices to weave together his domestic and foreign policies.

Biden’s travel abroad comes as he faces an increasingly pessimistic nation at home, and sours his views on how to handle the country’s economy. According to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 41% of Americans now accept Biden’s economic leadership, down from 49% in August and a sharp reversal since March, when 60% approved. Happened.

Americans are divided on Biden overall, with 48% approving and 51% disapproving of his handling of his job as president. Only a third of Americans say the country is moving in the right direction, also a significant drop from earlier this year when nearly half said so.

One consequence of Biden’s decision to link his domestic and foreign policies so closely is that both are now at the mercy of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kirsten Cinema, whose votes in the Senate are divided equally between Democrats and Republicans. are necessary. . Biden’s allies expect, among other things, more than $500 billion to be invested in the United States to tackle climate change, in efforts to persuade China and other countries to make their own investments in renewable energy. will help.

“It would be very positive to have it done before the trip,” Joe Biden Said Monday.

But as talks slowed, administration officials began to downplay the importance of Biden’s spending plan, which still hangs in the balance rather than shut down. White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the president could still work on the phone from Rome, the city that gave rise to the term “Senate.” He suggested on Wednesday that foreign leaders could look beyond ongoing back-room talks with US lawmakers to judge Biden’s commitment.

“They don’t see it through the prism of whether a body of the legislative body has a vote before getting on the airplane,” Saki said.

Reaching an agreement that has so far been dangerous to visit, the president begins his foreign trip with an expert in the power of prayer. Biden, the country’s second Catholic president, will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday in a visit that is particularly personal to the deeply religious commander on issues of climate and major and partial policy facing autocracy.

Biden will also visit the Italian hosts of the G20 summit before sitting down with French President Emmanuel Macron. Biden is trying to close a rift with France after the US and Britain agreed to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, scrapping a French contract in the process.

Biden is also expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who a few days ago backed down on threats to expel Western diplomats and whose purchases of Russian surface-to-air missiles have helped his F-35 fighter program. The country’s participation is maintained.

In those and other meetings, Biden is expected to address the Iranian nuclear threat and Iran’s announcement that it can return to talks in Vienna next month.

He is also set to continue to pressure wealthy US allies to advance their commitments to sharing a COVID-19 vaccine with low- and middle-income countries. Some nations have been slow to deliver on ambitious promises and others have been largely on edge. Biden would argue that the pandemic cannot end until vaccines are widely available, and that democracy cannot give in to Chinese and Russian vaccine diplomacy, which often comes with strings attached, Takes root on a global scale.

Biden will hold little talks with those two most important US rivals, as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin attend summits only because of the threat of the pandemic. Both of those leaders are critical to broader climate issues at a time of rising energy prices. China has committed to ramping up coal mining before winter, while Russia’s natural gas reserves have given it a degree of political power over parts of Europe.

Beyond the policies and personalities that will be prominent in Joe Biden’s journey, the president himself will try to make the case for democracy, arguing that “fair elections and representative government” are better than autocracy in good times and bad.

Biden, who heads to Scotland on Sunday night for a climate summit, will lead a large US delegation that he hopes will showcase America’s plans to tackle the threat of climate change. This is a sharp contrast from former President Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord.

Biden is set to deliver an important speech on climate change and attempt to reclaim the position of American leadership. One of the major objections to moving away from oil and other fossil fuels is cost, but the president has been claiming that nature is already charging the price from climate change with extreme weather.

The president noted in a Monday speech in New Jersey that US$100 billion has already been spent this year due to hurricanes, floods, fires and other disasters caused by climate change.

“We are going to address the root cause of ever-increasing extreme weather and destruction: the climate crisis? We have a climate crisis,” Biden said.

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