A Change of Era
President Biden bid farewell to world leaders on a swing through Latin America where he did not take a single question from reporters, offered no grand speeches, and his appearances were wrapped in thunderous silences, stilted scripts, and briefings from aides that many saw as signaling the twilight of a presidency that some expected would end the Trump era.
Few silences are louder than a world leader’s departure. Biden arrived last week in Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and then headed to his final gathering of G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro, a sequence that framed him against the backdrop of an incoming U.S. administration and a different set of economic and security expectations.
In both stops, his public presence was measured against the backdrop of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, and questions loomed about how his legacy would be defined before the January arrival of the elected president, the Republican Donald Trump, who has pledged to reverse a portion of the four years in office.
Biden moved through the Lima APEC summit with minimal remarks, and in the bilateral with Xi he offered only brief messages that were supplemented by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in a casual briefing that the president has not shown since signaling steps back from reelection earlier in the year.
Some recalled the Lima APEC gathering of 2016, when then-president Barack Obama arrived as the outgoing leader and, with Trump on the cusp of his first term, explained the key points of the transition and of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a large public briefing.
In six days of travel through South America, Biden did not answer a single question from reporters exhausted from shouting for his take on the most important issues of his last two months in office.
“Technically, he answered one,” explained a White House reporter, noting that after lunch with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president responded with a curt “peacefully” to a question from The New York Times about how Washington and Beijing would resolve their differences on North Korea.
Cambio de ciclo
Biden announced several initiatives during this long regional trip to support reforestation and green economy investments, with a record commitment of 4.000 billion dollars to World Bank financing instruments, but the recurring question remained: what happens to all of this when Trump arrives? (Associated Press)
To add to the context, both stops, in Lima and Rio, occurred almost in tandem with Xi’s delegation, which traveled on two 747s and helped inaugurate Peru’s largest deep-sea port through Chinese investment. (Reuters)
In Brazil, Biden’s schedule of bilateral meetings looked denser than the American side, and tomorrow he would be greeted with a red carpet by Lula in a formal visit to Brasilia. (AP)
Gaffes and Missteps
Biden, now 81, has faced sharp criticism on social media for slips and verbal lapses, especially since the awkward debate late last June with Trump that ultimately hinted at a potential campaign stumble, and with limited access to the president in his final weeks in office, the focus often lands on his missteps, even when they are unintended. (BBC)
Sunday, during a stop at an Amazon park in Manaus, Biden delivered a brief speech from a teleprompter and, after finishing, walked away toward the forest, a moment that quickly became meme fodder. On Monday in Rio, he missed a family photo at the summit due to timing confusion and a later exchange with Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, who also did not appear in the shot, prompting a playful jab that has become a Biden hallmark. (The Guardian)
“In my view, it’s loud that they didn’t wait for the U.S. president; under other circumstances this would have happened,” offered a veteran American journalist reflecting on the photo moment before the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain, where Biden has traveled in his armored vehicle known as the Beast, all in silence and amid a sea of spectators and flags from China and other nations. (The Washington Post)