Biden and Xi Set to Meet With Tensions High

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: U.S. President Joe Biden begins a weeklong trip to Egypt and Asia, Russian President Vladimir Putin opts out of attending the G-20 summit in person, and U.S. stocks rally after better-than-expected inflation data.

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U.S. President Joe Biden took off Thursday for a weeklong international trip on the heels of the U.S. midterm elections. The Republican Party is now expected to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January but with smaller gains than pollsters predicted. Abroad, Biden will likely project U.S. stability and strength—after all, his foreign policy may not change much with a new Congress, no matter the final election results.

The U.S. president will have a quick start at the United Nations climate summit, known as COP27, today in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. At COP27, Biden is expected to tout the landmark climate legislation passed in Washington this year—even as developing countries have spent the summit calling for climate aid for loss and damage caused in large part by wealthier nations. Biden is the only leader from a top emitter present at COP27; the leaders of China, Russia, and India did not attend.

Biden will then travel to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, currently hosting the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). There, the U.S. president will likely seek to reassure regional allies about the U.S. commitment to a rules-based order in the South China Sea. The Philippines and Indonesia have each looked to deepen military cooperation with the United States amid China’s saber-rattling over Taiwan, Bloomberg reports.

Biden’s most anticipated overseas engagement may come on Monday, when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the annual G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. It will be their first face-to-face meeting since Biden became president. (The two leaders have spoken five times.) The talks come amid rising tensions—over Taiwan, the continuing U.S. crackdown on Chinese technology, and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters, a senior White House official described the Biden-Xi meeting as aiming to “build a floor” for the U.S.-China relationship. With that in mind, expectations for the talks remain low. “I don’t think you should look at this meeting as one in which there’s going to be specific deliverables,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told journalists on Thursday.

Biden said he would avoid making concessions and wanted to draw “red lines” in the U.S.-China relationship—perhaps in the hope of avoiding further deterioration. Since entering office, the U.S. president has taken a strong stance on Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory. Beijing responded with aggression in August when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.

China has also bristled at U.S. policies targeting its ambitions in the technology sector, particularly the semiconductor industry. The effort to crack down on Chinese technology has gained steam under the Biden administration. New U.S. export controls on the equipment needed to make semiconductor chips “could set back China’s tech ambitions by as much as a decade,” FP’s Rishi Iyengar reports.

Climate once seemed to present a potential avenue for U.S.-China cooperation. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said this week that he had met his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, on the sidelines of COP27 for the first time since the summer, when China and the United States suspended climate dialogue. But it wasn’t a breakthrough: “We’ve had some informal talks, but we’re not in any formal negotiations,” Kerry said.

Putin may dial in for G-20. Russian officials confirmed on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not travel to Indonesia to join the gathering of G-20 leaders in person but may take part virtually. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, already in Southeast Asia to attend the ASEAN summit, will lead the Russian delegation in Bali. The G-20 summit officially begins on Nov. 15.

Indonesia faced some Western pressure to rescind Putin’s invitation to the meetings over his invasion of Ukraine, but it said it would not do so without member consensus. Earlier this year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Ukraine and Russia, hoping to encourage direct talks between the countries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also expected to attend the G-20 summit virtually.

U.S. stocks rally. The major U.S. stock indexes saw their best single-day gains since 2020 on Thursday, as investors reacted to news that inflation in the United States had begun to cool. The new consumer price index shows that major interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve may be helping to ease prices, with inflation at 7.7 percent in October compared with the previous year, down from 8.2 percent in September.

The Fed will make its next interest rate announcement in December—after another inflation report—but investors may already be betting that the central bank will slow the pace of its interest rate increases. The value of the U.S. dollar fell by more than 2 percent on Thursday, its biggest drop since 2009.

Ethiopia’s peace deal. More than a week after the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a surprising peace agreement, humanitarian organizations say they have not been able to reach millions of people in the war-torn region, the Guardian reports. As part of the truce, the federal government pledged to end its blockade on the region, but the World Health Organization says aid has not yet been allowed to pass.

In Foreign Policy, Mohamed Kheir Omer writes that Eritrea—which has a long-held grudge against the TPLF and has fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal government against Tigray since 2020—could undermine the truce.

Russia’s retreat. As Moscow said its troops had begun withdrawing from the city of Kherson, Ukrainian forces cautiously entered territory abandoned by Russian forces in the southern region. Information out of the city remains spotty; Ukrainian troops are working to remove land mines, and fighting continues in some areas. Reuters reported on Thursday that Russia will take at least a week to withdraw its troops from the city, according to Ukrainian officials.

As world leaders and dignitaries gather in Phnom Penh for the ASEAN summit, 25 lucky attendees will take home a unique souvenir: a locally made luxury watch. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a noted timepiece aficionado, shared images of the limited-edition watch on Facebook this week, designed to highlight his country’s “scientific and technical progress.”

The gifts may instead draw attention to Hun Sen’s own taste for the finer things, which has previously elicited criticism from Cambodians. Despite his official monthly salary of around $2,500, Vice reports that the strongman has been photographed wearing watches from the super high-end Patek Philippe brand, including one valued at $1.2 million.

A spokesperson for Hun Sen’s party told Reuters that there was “nothing political or strange” about the ASEAN watches, adding, “It is the kindness of the host country to give them as souvenirs to leaders.”