London, United Kingdom — Joe Biden will make his presidential debut on the world stage on Friday as America’s G7 partners re-focus their collective …
London, United Kingdom — Joe Biden will make his presidential debut on the world stage on Friday as America’s G7 partners re-focus their collective heft on pandemic recovery and climate change after the psychodramas of the Trump era. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this year’s G7 chairman who hopes to host the grouping’s leaders in Britain in June, will use the virtual talks to urge the development of new vaccines in just 100 days. That would represent a dramatic decrease on the 300-odd days that were needed to come up with jabs against the coronavirus — in itself a breakneck achievement. Following the summit, Biden, Johnson and European Union leaders in the G7 will join another gathering online, the annual Munich Security Conference, to discuss “renewing transatlantic cooperation”. Biden will become the first US president to address the Munich meeting, underlining a decisive shift after cooperation was all but broken under his go-it-alone predecessor Donald Trump. Since taking office last month, the Democrat has re-committed the United States to climate action and the World Health Organization (WHO). But he has maintained one Trumpian perspective — mistrust of China. Beijing is not part of the G7 — which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the US — and Washington is repositioning rich democracies as a counterweight to China amid mistrust of its initial handling of Covid-19.
