Prez Biden juggles G7 and debt stalemate back home

Biden at G7 summit. Pic/PTI

Joe Biden was seeking to rally regional cooperation against China on the margins of the Group of Seven summit Saturday, while confronting a stalemate in Washington over how to ensure the US avoids default.

Hoping to avert an outcome that would rattle the global economy and prove to be a boon to Beijing, Biden began his third day in Japan at the annual meeting of the world's most powerful democracies with a briefing by staff on the latest fits and starts in the showdown over how to raise the federal debt limit. The president on Saturday was also squeezing in meetings aimed at challenging China's buildout across the Indo-Pacific, including with the so-called Quad partnership made up of the US, Australia, Japan and India.

The Quad members originally had been scheduled to meet in Sydney next week, but rescheduled their meeting for the sidelines of the G7 to allow Biden to return to Washington earlier on Sunday in hopes of finalising a deal to increase the debt ceiling before the US runs out of cash to pay its bills. The shortened trip has reinforced a fundamental tension shaping Biden's presidency: As he has tried to signal to the world that the US is reclaiming the mantle of global leadership, at key moments, domestic dramas keep getting in the way.

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The president has largely stayed out of the public eye at the summit, forgoing big public statements and leaving Friday's leader dinner early. He's been spending time instead by a video monitor in a room next to his hotel suite, where aides in Washington have been keeping him apprised of the back and forth of debt limit talks.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged that world leaders have been pressing Biden about the debt limit standoff in Washington. But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that while there was intense interest in how the President would resolve a domestic showdown that has geopolitical ramifications, there was no panic at least not yet. It's not a hair-on-fire type of situation, she said. That presidential stop, too, was scrapped, says sources.

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