Having been denied another run for the presidency by party hierarchy, Mr. Biden departs on his final tour of duty.

THE HILL Reports: President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for the third and final time on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru on Saturday, in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.

“The United States has recently concluded its elections,” Xi told Biden. “China’s goal of a stable, healthy and sustainable China-U.S. relationship remains unchanged.” End.

However, President Jinping is showing signs of concern with President-elect Thump speaking of a 60% tariff on imports to the US in order to equal the massive trade imbalances with China.

A.P.E.C. has 21 member nations cooperating in trade and economic issues.

The 2024 G20 Meeting

Following the A.P.E.C. meeting the President visiting the Amazon rain forest, and continued on to the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

REUTERS: RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 18 2024 – Leaders from the Group of 20 major economies on Monday issued a joint statement highlighting the suffering caused by conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, while calling for cooperation on climate change, poverty reduction and tax policy.

G20 leaders meeting at Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Art Museum for a two-day summit tackled an agenda that reflected a shifting global order, trying to shore up multilateral consensus before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump returns to power in January.

Their discussions of trade, climate change and international security will run up against the sharp U.S. policy changes that Trump vows upon taking office, from tariffs to the promise of a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine.

Still, leaders at the summit were able to reach a narrow consensus on the escalating Ukraine war, focused succinctly on “human suffering” and the economic fallout of the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend the summit, and Moscow was represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

It took marathon negotiations over the weekend for diplomats to finalize the joint statement, with debate over climate policy stretching into the dawn hours of Sunday, according to people involved in the talks.

In their statement, leaders agreed the world needs to reach a deal by the end of the United Nations COP29 climate change summit in Azerbaijan on a new financial goal for how much money rich nations must provide to poorer developing nations.

COP29 officials had called on the G20 leaders for a strong signal to help breach the impasse on climate finance. While the joint statement said nations need to resolve the issue, they did not indicate what should be the solution at the U.N. summit set to end on Friday.

As host of this year’s G20 meetings, Brazil expanded the group’s focus on extreme poverty and hunger, while introducing debate on cooperation to fairly tax the world’s wealthiest – topics also highlighted in the leaders’ joint statement. End.

The number of Forty Billion seems to be the reality, but with One Trillion Dollars now being demanded! Meanwhile the President-elect will once again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, as these nations clamor for Billions of Dollars and Euros.

Meanwhile China and India have not been ordered to cut back on their emissions for years to come, and will continue to receive more handouts as developing nations!!!

Tax The Rich Give To The Poor

The discussion was based on how the wealthier nations should be taxed, and it was explain how it is possible for the rich to borrow at low interest rates to provide these Billions.

Perhaps these nations should create a fund to assist the U.S. to pay down their almost THIRTY FIVE TRILLION DOLLAR NATIONAL DEBT which the world has benefitted from, before demanding they borrow any more.

NBCNEWS By Hannah Peart: There was no photo finish for President Joe Biden.

The outgoing American leader arrived for a family picture with world leaders during his final Group of 20 summit Monday, only to find the photo had already been taken without him.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer were among those who did make it, smiling and raising linked hands for the traditional summit set piece.

A senior U.S. official attributed the mix-up in Rio de Janeiro to logistical challenges.

“Due to logistical issues, they took the family photo early before all the leaders had arrived. So a number of leaders weren’t actually there when they took the photo,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Biden was nowhere to be found until just after the photo was taken, when photographers and reporters began searching frantically for him.

One cameraman spotted him behind a nearby palm tree alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni.

Trudeau and Meloni also missed the photo.

When asked whether Biden intentionally skipped the photo to avoid standing near Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the official dismissed the idea, stating, “It was just simply logistical issues.” End.

USA TODAY-RIO DE JANEIRO Francesca Chambers

Trump’s return to White House has foreign governments jockeying for position as they size up his national security team, build up a rapport with the incoming administration and try to get on the Republican’s good side before he follows through on campaign pledges that could strain America’s military and economic alliances.

“Most of the action right now from our trading partners and allies is in trying to make inroads with the incoming president-elect, Trump, and whoever might be his future team,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, who was deputy director of the National Economic Council in his first administration.

Trump vowed to put the squeeze on China and Europe through tariffs and other means during his campaign and has signaled his intent to leave the Paris climate deal again.End.

POLITICO: RIO DE JANEIRO–By ELI STOKOLS and LAUREN EGAN

Joe Biden’s first foreign trip as president in 2021 was a celebratory mission to reassure democratic allies that America was back. As he leaves for his final overseas summits, that promise is in shambles with the emphatic victory of Donald Trump.

As international leaders gather for summits this week in Lima, Peru, and Rio de Janeiro for what might have been the president’s proud valedictory, capping a decadeslong foreign policy career, the supposed leader of the free world is an afterthought.

Domestically, his voters just rejected his and his party’s support for strengthening NATO, building international alliances and backing Ukraine as it battles Russia. Other leaders this week will likely focus far more on adjusting to the rapidly changing global order Biden leaves in his wake.

“They were hoping that Trump was the aberration. Turns out, I think they’re going to see that, no, Biden was the aberration and that America has fundamentally changed,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “This is truly the end of the Pax Americana. This is it, it’s over.”

For all of Biden’s efforts to revitalize alliances and restore a foreign policy defined by shared democratic values, autocrats in Moscow and Beijing are poised to outlast many of their western adversaries.

Biden’s economic policy, despite all his talk about alliances, was protectionist to its core. And the president’s own unpopularity looks to be the biggest reason why voters scurried back to Trump, a flatterer of strongmen and unabashed populist with a mercantilist view of the world and willingness to deal one-on-one with anyone.

Biden is scheduled to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima.

But after fostering a relationship with the Chinese leaders over the past 15 years, Biden will have little control over where the U.S.-China relationship goes under Trump, who appears committed to levying new tariffs against Beijing to reduce its massive trade surplus.

The president will stop in the Amazon rainforest on the way from Lima to Rio, an opportunity to highlight U.S. investments in clean energy and his leadership in combating climate change. But Trump’s return gravely threatens Biden’s climate policies and America’s commitment to the Paris climate accord and other international agreements.

Biden’s unpopularity looks to be the biggest reason why voters scurried back to Donald Trump, a flatterer of strongmen and unabashed populist with a mercantilist view of the world.

And as leaders convene for the G20 in Brazil, discussions of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine will be driven not by current U.S. policy but by allies calculating how it may change.

Biden has failed for more than a year to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into cease-fire talks, and the war in Ukraine has bogged down into a stalemate despite the more than $200 billion in defense aid NATO countries have provided since the war began.

But the president has helped revitalize NATO and succeeded in strengthening the latticework of Indo Pacific cooperation in an effort to contain China’s sphere of influence.

Asked whether Biden’s message to allies would shift in the wake of Trump’s reelection, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the president would arrive in South America with “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. They make us stronger.”

“When he goes to this Asia-Pacific summit in Peru, he’ll go with our alliances in the Indo Pacific at a literal all-time high,” Sullivan added. “And that’s what he’s going to hand off to President Trump.”

But keeping NATO unified following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has not amounted to putting the country in position to win on the battlefield.

That leaves the resolution of this proxy war between Russia and the West largely in the hands of Trump, who has long been clear about his disregard for NATO and Europe’s security while seeking a warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The United States no longer holds the ‘shared values’ that a lot of these alliances were at least partially based on,” said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm based in New York.

“Biden personally saw this through a Cold War lens of ‘democracies versus autocracies.’ Trump doesn’t. And it’s now clear that the United States just does not have staying power in the commitments that it makes to allies and to a global order.”

The U.S. may not be alone in that regard. Like-minded allies around the world have also seen their support crumble in the post-pandemic economic and security landscape. Two of the leaders closest to Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are likely now measuring their own time left in office in months.

Meanwhile, leaders who cling less tightly to — or even reject — the values-based order Biden vowed to restore may be better positioned to take advantage of a new era defined by Trump’s naked transactionalism.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who leads a party with links to her country’s fascist movement, has worked well with Biden and aligned with the G7 broadly on defending Ukraine, which Biden memorably promised that democratic allies would defend “with whatever it takes for as long as it takes.”

That promise, however, was never true, as the U.S. Congress struggled for months to approve the last $60 billion defense aid package earlier this year and as other allies saw their political support weaken.

This Lawyer Has Some Advice for Trump’s Would-Be Targets: Take A Vacation Trump’s immigration crackdown is expected to start on Day 1 Matt Gaetz feels the heat…The one agency that might have the muscle to oppose Elon Musk… Republicans suddenly think the economy’s great and the election wasn’t rigged

Now, with Trump and other autocrats ascendant, some wonder if Meloni could shift her stance more in line with those eager to negotiate an end to the conflict. To say nothing of leaders in Hungary, India, Saudi Arabia and Argentina who may be more eager to engage with the White House under Trump.

“The old order is gone. And a new order will have to be created,” Daalder said. “There is a realignment happening in European politics, as well as the United States, which is a kind of alignment with a growing sense of illiberalism, the far-right, wannabe fascism. Meloni, [Hungarian President Viktor] Orbán, the Law and Justice Party in Poland will all be significantly strengthened by what happened.”

During his first term, Trump’s “America First” approach was hard to reconcile with international alliances like NATO, the G7 and G20, which aims to foster multilateral collaboration on economic matters.

And for all of Biden’s rhetoric about prioritizing alliances, he, too, often went his own way, rankling allies with his unilateral decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, alienating France over the AUKUS submarine deal with Britain and Australia and a domestic industrial policy that has impacted Europe’s electric vehicle and semiconductor markets and their economies more broadly.

At a moment when multilateral economic coordination may matter more as the pandemic’s effects on supply chains and inflation are still being felt throughout the world, Trump’s return may shift much of the conversation in Rio to preparing for the tariffs he is likely to impose. The preparations for Trump’s return are moving more swiftly than they did in 2016.

“These leaders have a much better sense this time around than they did before. They are much more prepared than they were eight years ago,” said Josh Lipsky, a senior director at the Atlantic Council. “They understand what they have to do in terms of trade resiliency, bilateral trade negotiations, and preparing their own economies. So you’re going to see a lot less hand wringing and consternation and questioning than you did eight years ago.”

Biden does not plan to deliver a major foreign policy speech on this trip, his last major multilateral engagement with other world leaders. But according to two administration officials, he may give a major foreign policy address before leaving office in January.

Ironically, even though Democrats lost their bid to keep the White House largely due to the public’s frustrations with the higher cost of goods, Biden’s tenure has left the U.S. as the strongest economy in the world. The talk of being overtaken by China has stopped.

That means that whatever dramatic changes occur in Washington every four years, other countries will continue to look for ways to engage with the world’s singular superpower.

My thanks to these contributors.

Brian Harris for America And Britains Future.

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