The White House said the leaders of the Quad nations had agreed to hold their summit meeting in Hiroshima.
(Photo: IMGO/UPI Photo)
Hiroshima US President Joe Biden wants to meet the heads of government of Japan, India and Australia on Saturday on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima. The White House announced a round of the so-called quad format on Friday.
Biden will meet the prime ministers of three countries – Fumio Kishida, Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese – for round four on Saturday night. In Hiroshima, the seven leading industrial democracies are holding their summit this year through Sunday. The US and Japan are in the G7 group, while India and Australia are not – but they are represented there as guests.
Biden originally planned to travel to Australia from the G7 summit with a stop in Papua New Guinea and attend the Quad Summit meeting there next week.
Due to a domestic budget crunch, Biden has canceled visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia and announced that he will return to Washington directly from Japan to prevent an imminent default by the US government.
The White House has now announced that the heads of state and government of the Quad nations have agreed to hold their summit in Hiroshima. Biden thanked his colleagues’ flexibility and looks forward to making another trip to Australia.
Since taking office, Biden has placed a special focus on the Indo-Pacific in his administration’s foreign policy – among other things, to counter China’s attempts to seize control of the region.
The backdrop to his change of travel plans is that the US government is in danger of defaulting in early June if Biden’s team does not agree with Republicans in Congress to raise the debt ceiling by then.
In the US, parliament sets such limits at irregular intervals and determines how much money the state can borrow. This time the procedure has turned into a bitter tug-of-war, fraught with grave danger: a default by the world’s largest economy could trigger a global financial crisis and an economic downturn.
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