What to watch from Joe Biden’s trip to the G7
Telfs-Buchen, Austria
CNN
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President Joe Biden may be overseas in the Bavarian Alps, but the political division and sour mood he left behind will be difficult to ignore as he begins this year’s Group of 7 summit.
Rising costs – driven in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine – will be central to Sunday’s agenda, where leaders will simultaneously work to sustain their pressure on Moscow while also looking for ways to ease price spikes that have cost them each politically.
That could prove a challenging task. Bans on Russian energy have contributed to a spike in global oil prices, yet leaders are loathe to ease up on sanctions they believe are having an effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economy. One area they have announced action: Banning imports of new Russian gold.
“This is a key export, a key source of revenue, a key alternative for Russia, in terms of their ability to transact in the global financial system. Taking this step cuts off that capacity,” a senior administration official said.
At the same time, Biden continues to confront fallout from Friday’s ruling fundamentally altering abortion rights for women in the United States, a decision that’s drawn condemnation from several of his fellow world leaders.
The ruling put into sharp relief the divisions roiling American politics and institutions, which have acted as a worrying subtext for leaders observing Biden’s attempts at restoring American leadership.
Here are several things to watch at Sunday’s G7 summit:
Biden and fellow G7 leaders will discuss ways to punish Russia while still managing an unsteady global economy during their first day of talks Sunday in the Bavarian Alps. The conversations will produce some announcements and “muscle movements,” according to a senior White House official.
“A large focus of the G7 and the leaders are going to be, you know, how to not only manage the challenges in the global economy as a result of Mr. Putin’s war, but how to also continue to hold Mr. Putin accountable and to make sure that he is being subjected to costs and consequences for what he’s doing,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communication at the National Security Council, as Biden was flying to Europe.
Biden’s first engagement Sunday will be a bilateral meeting with the summit’s host, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, followed by the opening G7 session focused on global economic issues that have been aggravated by the Ukraine war.
“I think leaders are going to be looking for ways to do two things: One, continue to hold Mr. Putin accountable and to increase the costs and consequences of his war on him and his economy,” Kirby said. “And two, minimizing as much as possible the effect of these rising oil prices and the way he has weaponized energy on nations, particularly on the continent but also around the world.”
That balance will define this year’s G7, as leaders work to sustain their pressure campaign on Putin while also confronting rising inflation that has cost some leaders’ politically at home. Biden remarked on the solidarity of the G7 and NATO on Ukraine and the Russian invasion, telling Scholz ahead of the two leaders’ meeting that the groups must remain unified.
“We have to stay together. As Putin has been counting on from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said.
The leaders have agreed to announce an import ban on new gold from Russia, Biden said on Twitter Sunday morning. Gold is the second largest export for Russia after energy.
Biden has weathered some of the harshest blowback as he’s seen his approval ratings drop amid a rise in prices.
“There may well be rising pressure in US politics, in the sense of some people in the primaries we’ve seen already have said I don’t care about Ukraine. What matters is cost of living,” one European official said ahead of this week’s trip. “And if the President did get a bounce in the polls because of his leadership on Ukraine, that’s very fast being dissipated. So there’ll be that effect.”
Biden declared Friday the Supreme Court’s conservative majority “made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world” by stripping the nationwide right to abortion.
Two days later, he will come face-to-face with the leaders of those nations in the Bavarian Alps, leaving behind a rapidly dividing country whose fractious politics have drawn the world’s concern.
The White House doesn’t believe the ruling or the fractures now splitting America will factor into Biden’s discussions.
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