LIMA, Peru — Even 3,000 miles away from the White House, President Joe Biden cannot escape questions about Donald Trump’s return to power.
As Biden sat in a small conference room for a meeting on Friday with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, he ignored reporters’ shouted questions about what he’s told his counterparts at the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit here about an impending second Trump administration.
“This is likely to be my last trilateral meeting with this important group, but I’m proud to have helped be one of the parts of building this — this partnership, and I think it’s built to last,” Biden said in opening remarks. “That’s my hope and expectation.”
A few hours later, sitting next to the Peruvian president for a one-on-one meeting at the sprawling Lima Convention Center, he gave a tight-lipped smile to the press corps after a reporter again asked his message to allies about his successor.
Biden arrived in Lima on Thursday evening, just over a week after Trump’s election win. The president, who will travel to Rio de Janeiro on Sunday for the G20 summit, had hoped the trip would serve as the capstone to his decadeslong foreign policy career. But Trump’s reelection has cast a shadow over the visit, threatening to unravel Biden’s efforts to revitalize U.S. alliances and to steady a rapidly changing global order.
As leaders meet in Lima and Rio, they will confront how to handle ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and eastern Europe. Tackling climate change will also be a major focus, one which Biden plans to highlight with a brief visit to the Amazon rainforest in between the two summits. Biden is also scheduled to meet Saturday afternoon with Chinese President Xi Jinping before departing Lima.
Despite warning for months that Trump presented a unique threat to the core of American democracy and the Constitution, Biden has tried to project a sense of calm since the election. In a Rose Garden speech two days after the election, Biden reassured the country that the “American experiment endures,” and said, “We’re going to be OK.” He’s emphasized the importance of a peaceful transition of power, something Trump denied him four years ago. And he even hosted Trump for a two-hour-long Oval Office meeting the day before he departed for APEC.
And all week long, Trump has dominated the conversation in the U.S. and abroad with a flurry of personnel appointments at all hours through leaks, social media posts and formal announcements. The range of personalities chosen — from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as secretary of State, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary — have left American allies alternatively reassured and perplexed about the direction of the next administration.
Senior Biden administration officials at APEC have also been peppered with questions about whether Trump is coming up in the president’s closed-door meetings with other world leaders. But officials here have tried to assuage any anxiety, downplaying allies’ concerns about the election and insisting that Trump has not been a topic of discussion.
After Biden’s meeting with the Japanese prime minister and South Korean president, a senior administration official, granted anonymity to speak about the discussion, said the “president-elect’s name did not come up.” Even Trump’s relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, undoubtedly a source of concern for the South Koreans, was not discussed, according to the official.
“What we’re focused on is the here and now,” the official said. “There was a recognition that we’re in a period of transition. But as we often say, there’s one president at a time, and the focus of this meeting was what are we going to do together, especially over the next couple of months.”
Another senior administration official, also granted anonymity to share details about Biden’s meeting with the Peruvian president, said that Trump was not a focus of the 50-minute-long conversation.
“It really focused on the current U.S. bilateral relationship,” the official said. “President Biden did underscore the importance of respect for democracy and strengthening democratic institutions, as he does in all of his meetings with democratic counterparts around the world.”
Asked again if Trump came up at all with the Peruvians, the official said: “Not explicitly, no.”
