President Joe Biden was physically present at the Group of Seven summit in Japan but his focus was often 7,000 miles away on Washington, where talks to avert a catastrophic US default hit an impasse.
The White House hastily rewrote Biden’s schedule in Hiroshima after scrapping planned stops in Australia and Papua New Guinea just before his departure from the US so he could return home for debt-limit talks. The result was a summit where Biden came across at times as distracted by events back home even as he sought to engage other world leaders.
A sought-after, three-way meeting with counterparts from Japan and South Korea turned into a brief huddle and photo, with Biden inviting them to meet more fully in Washington at a later date. A separate summit with leaders of the so-called Quad nations of Australia, India and Japan — originally set for next week in Sydney — was moved to Saturday and lasted less than an hour, though Biden did squeeze in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
US officials said the debt-limit crisis did not deter progress at the summit but acknowledged that Biden had to divide his attention between Hiroshima and Washington, given the intense nature of budget negotiations. Other leaders asked Biden about the status of talks, understanding that he had to monitor the situation closely, the officials said.
Biden plans to speak with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from Air Force One on his way back to Washington. Talks between the White House and Republicans stalled over the weekend, with McCarthy saying there couldn’t be progress until Biden returned.
“I’m hoping that Speaker McCarthy is just waiting to negotiate with me,” Biden said at his post-summit news conference shortly before leaving Japan on Sunday. “I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
Biden’s trip was intended to highlight the crown jewels of his foreign policy: bolstering Ukraine’s war effort and flexing US diplomatic might to counter China’s influence in the Pacific. Yet there were only a handful of opportunities for Biden to personally show that work to the public.
Biden unexpectedly cut short his appearance at a Thursday night leaders’ dinner on picturesque Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Bay, one of several times during the four-day trip that he was pulled aside for a debt-limit update.
Reporters traveling with Biden saw him only for brief moments before his Sunday news conference. White House officials said Japan was responsible for setting terms of access to summit sessions, several of which were closed to the media.
On the occasions he spoke publicly alongside world leaders, he expressed regret for leaving the region earlier than he wanted and promised fuller meetings at a later date.
“Again, I truly apologize to you for having you to come here, rather than me being in Australia right now. But we have a little thing going on at home I got to pay attention to,” Biden told Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Saturday.
As a consolation prize, he invited Albanese to Washington for a state dinner in the prime minister’s honor and the White House has said Biden would seek to reschedule his Australia trip.
Some markets are increasingly flashing warning signs as the US’s cash pile dwindles, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned funds to pay obligations could run out as early as June 1. Treasury bills that mature after that date in early June have traded with significant yield premiums because of the default risk, and the cost of insuring US debt against non-payment has soared in recent weeks.
A first-ever US payments default would cause massive pain for the global economy, with forecasts of job losses and higher borrowing costs. That put the standoff in Washington on the minds of Biden’s counterparts at the Hiroshima summit.
“It is definitely a subject of interest here at the G-7,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Saturday. “Countries want to have a sense of how these negotiations are going to play out.”
Sullivan said, however, that the impasse was not “generating alarm” and that Biden assured leaders the US could reach a deal to avoid a default.
Biden traveled to Japan with his approval ratings low and a potential rematch looming against Donald Trump in 2024 that could test the president’s assertion that “America is back” on the world stage.
Yet there were signs that Biden’s diplomacy paid dividends at the summit. G-7 partners agreed on language pushing back against Chinese economic coercion, a development Biden’s aides touted as fruit of his efforts to get European powers to acknowledge threats posed by Beijing.
Zelenskiy’s unscheduled appearance in Hiroshima underlined Biden’s frequent refrain that he kept the free world united in support of Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader was able to leave Hiroshima with a major victory by securing the US president’s support to train his pilots on F-16 fighter jets as well as a fresh $375 million aid package and tighter export restrictions on Russia.
White House officials insisted that Biden’s abbreviated foreign travel did not hurt his standing with world leaders. Albanese even gave Biden some grace, saying he too would have shortened foreign travel if he faced a similarly perilous crisis.
“All politics is local, as you and I both understand,” Albanese said.