President Joe Biden began the ninth Summit of the Americas with a rousing call for cooperation and democratic unity amid economic uncertainty and uncontrolled migration.
“Democracy is under assault around the world,” Biden said after a brief interruption by a heckler, adding that it was a principle that united the region. “We don’t always agree on everything. But because we believe in democracy, we work out our differences with respect and dialogue.”
SOME-IT OF THE AMERICAS: ABSENCES MAR BIDEN’S BIG MEETING WITH REGIONAL LEADERS
Although Biden was addressing an international audience, he hit many familiar domestic themes. “Trickle-down economics does not work,” he said, reprising his usual theme of growing the economy from “the middle out and bottom up.”
Biden argued his environmental policies would help. “When I think climate, I hear jobs,” he said. And he repeated his call to shore up supply chains.
The president was preceded by a series of American children welcoming and reciting facts about countries participating in the summit, followed by introductory remarks by Peruvian President Pedro Castillo and U.S. officials including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, nominated by Biden to be ambassador to India, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), and Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator from the host state.
Biden spoke as the summit was overshadowed by absences. The president’s attempt to limit the meeting to democracies by excluding some of the region’s autocratic governments led other leaders to boycott the events. The White House refused to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela by choice, but the snub by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador stung and led to lower expectations.
The White House publicly downplayed the Mexican leader’s refusal to attend, calling it a “sovereign decision” that “we just disagree with.”
The United States convened the gathering of neighbors while grappling with a border crisis that has plagued Biden’s whole term. Harris clung Wednesday to her “root causes” portfolio for dealing with the migrant surge, saying most of the people streaming across the southern border “don’t want to leave home” and would not do so if their own countries were more stable and prosperous.
“When we are able to improve the prosperity and stability of our neighbors, we as a nation benefit,” Harris said at an event earlier Wednesday. “So the work that we have been doing in the summit has been to bring CEOs together. Heads of state of a number … of the countries in the Western Hemisphere are going to be here to talk about how we can continue to collaborate.”
“Safe and orderly migration is good for all our countries, including the United States,” Biden said.
Washington is also seeking to shore up its regional and global influence amid China’s rise, which is why Biden, former chairman of the Senate Relations Committee, was eager to preside over the events and showcase his foreign policy chops.
Biden urged reforms to the Inter-American Development Bank to boost private investment in the region and commit $300 million toward food aid. Harris announced Tuesday nearly $2 billion in new private sector investments in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
“The U.S. remains the most powerful force in driving hemispheric actions to address core challenges facing the people of the Americas: inequality, health, climate, and food security,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “And so the president continues to be a leader in the hemisphere.”
But the comparatively sparse attendance put a damper on that image, with Biden forced to converse by phone with Venezuela’s opposition leader even as he launched the summit.
Migration has remained impervious to Biden-Harris solutions to regulate border crossings. A caravan of thousands of migrants is making its way toward the 2,000-mile-long border the U.S. shares with Mexico, hoping to arrive while Biden is feting summit attendees as a powerful illustration of one of his most enduring political problems.
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Biden and other speakers at Microsoft Theater stressed the racial diversity of the host city and state. The president has been struggling with an erosion of Hispanic support at home, according to several polls.
