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President Biden will attend global summits in Peru and Brazil as world leaders prepare for the return of Donald Trump’s isolationist foreign policy.
- Nov. 14, 2024Updated 1:27 p.m. ET
President Biden’s trip to Peru and Brazil, which starts Thursday, was supposed to have been his final chance to tell fellow world leaders that he was right along — former President Donald J. Trump was a one-time aberration whose America First policies had been swept aside by voters.
Instead, the president will be forced to acknowledge that Mr. Trump, now president-elect, is back. Mr. Biden’s belief in global institutions and partnerships will soon be replaced once again by Mr. Trump’s disdain for allies, embrace of isolationism and fondness for authoritarian regimes.
The week’s two summits in Lima and Rio will not be the reaffirmation that Mr. Biden had wanted of a foreign policy legacy built during a career in Congress and the White House. Rather, the gatherings will be a kind of elegy for a bygone era that defined American foreign policy for most of the president’s life.
“He’s not in a position to reassure people about U.S. foreign policy after Jan. 20 so it’s not his to predict or his to guarantee,” said Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Haass said the trip represents “a bridge between two very different conceptions of America’s role in the world.”
Ricardo Zúñiga, a former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department and former U.S. Consul General in São Paulo, Brazil, was blunt about what foreign leaders would think about Mr. Biden and the fate of his agenda when they see him at the summits.
“A lame duck is a lame duck,” Mr. Zúñiga said. “And they know it.”
Aides to the president say he is determined to keep pursuing that agenda until his last moment in office. In Peru, they said he would focus attention on his administration’s efforts in the Asia-Pacific region, especially when it comes to confronting Chinese aggression. Later, he will focus on the need to combat climate change, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest. And in Rio, Mr. Biden will have his last global opportunity to make the case for Ukraine and to champion the alliances he has advocated during his term.
English (US)