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LIMA, Peru — President Joe Biden has often told the tale of the first international summit of his presidency, when he promised world leaders that the America they had long known as a reliable partner had returned after the chaotic tenure of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a>. “America is back,” he assured his counterparts.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in Biden’s telling, had a quick response: “For how long?”

Biden arrived here on Thursday night to join his last two global summits as president, first an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Lima, then a Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. The meetings come amid a period of deep anxiety for many democracies and a global realignment that could upend many of the aspirations Biden had coming into office.

Biden ran as an antidote to Trump’s disdain for traditional alliances, and he has worked hard to reestablish America’s longtime foreign policy and its place in the world. But now Biden will be forced to hand power back to Trump and watch as world leaders prepare for a less predictable America.

“This is not going to be a swan song for Biden,” said Erin Murphy, senior fellow on emerging Asia economies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Not only is he a lame duck, but a super lame duck because his successor is going to have very different policies than he is.”

Biden’s influence is rapidly waning, she added, and world leaders will mostly want to figure out how to work with Trump and the man he’s chosen as secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Trump’s picks for defense secretary and director of national intelligence, television host Pete Hegseth and former  congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, mark an even more dramatic and unpredictable shift.

A number of the leaders planning to attend the APEC and G-20 conferences have already been in touch with Trump. The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol says he has even started <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/12/south-korea-yoon-trump-golf/" target=_blank>brushing up on his golf game</a> to better bond with Trump. Some leaders are hoping to stop in Florida to visit the president-elect in conjunction with their trip to South America.

“I think the APEC and G-20 will be about one thing,” said Victor Cha, a professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University. “All that, I think, the APEC leaders and G-20 leaders will be talking about is the one world leader who is not there, and that is Donald Trump, and what to expect from the next Trump administration on trade, alliances, and other issues.”

The trip to South America puts Biden in a similar position to then-president Barack Obama eight years ago, when he also came to Lima just after a Trump victory upended American politics. At the time, Trump was relatively unknown, while now, many of the leaders have some idea of what to expect.

“When President Obama went to this G-20 after President Trump’s election, the message he delivered was, ‘Let’s see what President Trump does before you pre-react to things,’” said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. “The message President Biden’s going to deliver is, ‘You know what this is going to be like.’”

He added, “You see a world that’s much more prepared for a second Trump presidency than it was for the first Trump presidency.”

The APEC and G-20 meetings are likely Biden’s final international summits of a 50-year public career that has emphasized foreign policy. Between the two gatherings, he will travel on Sunday to the Amazon, the first-ever American presidential visit to the rainforest.

Biden is hardly the only leader at the summits who is facing turbulence at home. The government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/12/germany-set-early-elections-february-after-government-collapse/" target=_blank>has collapsed</a>, prompting him to call for snap elections in February. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/26/canada-justin-trudeau-polls-poilievre/" target=_blank>Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unpopularity</a> has driven some members of his own party to call on him to step down.

The summits will also include a range of new leaders, including from Indonesia, Mexico, Japan and Vietnam. Indonesia’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/10/indonesia-china-us-subianto-investment-xi/9997e184-9f41-11ef-b90e-a2320192900f_story.html" target=_blank>Prabowo Subianto</a> recently met with Biden at the White House, and he also called Trump and said he hoped to meet with him soon.

During the APEC summit, Biden is scheduled to meet jointly with Korea’s Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, the leaders of two countries Biden has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/18/biden-declares-new-era-partnership-with-south-korea-japan/" target=_blank>worked hard to bring together</a>. He will also sit down separately with Peruvian President Dina Boluarte Zegarra.

On Saturday, Biden <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/13/biden-meet-saturday-with-chinas-xi-jinping/" target=_blank>plans to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping</a> in what will likely be the final face-to-face session between the two longtime leaders of the world’s biggest superpowers. Biden’s relationship with Xi has been among the most consequential of his presidency, by turns combustible and conciliatory.

China now faces the threat of sweeping tariffs promised by Trump. “The competition with the People’s Republic of China is going to be defining for what the world looks like over the course of the next 10, 20 and 30 years,” said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. “And so that has got to be a paramount priority for the incoming administration.”

White House officials say Biden plans to use his final meeting with Xi to discuss narcotic trafficking, climate change and artificial intelligence, as well as the lines of communication the two leaders have developed to better avoid military conflicts.

Biden’s relationship with Xi dates to when both men were serving as vice president of their respective nations, assigned to deal with one another in a way that would have been difficult for the then-heads of state, Obama and Hu Jintao. Biden and Xi forged an unlikely connection; both had climbed steadily through their countries’ contrasting political systems, and both were institutionalists in their own way.

Biden’s stop on Sunday in the rainforest is meant to underscore an American commitment to combating climate change. The president plans to visit Manaus, Brazil, where he will meet with local leaders working to preserve the ecosystem. It will be the first ever-visit to the Amazon by a sitting U.S. president.

Here as well, though, Biden’s efforts could be undermined by Trump, who has downplayed climate change and could undercut Biden’s push for new investments in clean energy. When Trump was president the first time, one of his early actions was to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord; when Biden was elected, one of his first moves was to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/02/19/climate-paris-accord/" target=_blank>rejoin it</a>.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden stood by his comments saying that Trump was a threat to democracy, even as he attempts to oversee an orderly transition of power to Trump.

“Everything that he has shared during the last, you know, almost four years about his thoughts about democracy — democracy being a threat — still stands,” she told reporters on Air Force One. “That hasn’t changed. So I just want to be really clear about that.”

She said he still believed that voters made their decision, and Biden now has a responsibility to honor their choice.

“What has changed is there was an election,” she said. “There was and here’s the thing, a transition, an orderly transition of power, is part of our democratic principle.”

Unlike some of his predecessors, Biden hasn’t responded to questions in the aftermath of the election results. He gave prepared remarks from the Rose Garden shortly after it, and he hosted Trump in the Oval Office. But there has not been a news conference, nor is there one planned during his foreign trip.

“I just don’t have anything more to share,” Jean-Pierre said. “He will continue to engage with the press. I don’t have anything beyond that to say.”

The United States is slated to host the G-20 in 2026, which will give Trump even more influence over a global agenda. He will also be president when the United States hosts the World Cup in 2026 and the Olympics in the summer of 2028.

“I think it’s safe to say that the U.S. G-20 under President Trump will look very different than previous G-20s that have been hosted by the U.S.,” Lipsky said. “It’s going to be a G-20, I think it’s safe to say, about how you reconcile the ‘America First’ priorities of President-elect Trump with the nature of the G-20, which is all about international multilateral collaboration. That’s a tension and a friction that’s going to have to be navigated in the year ahead.”

That means Biden’s current trip will be shadowed by urgent questions about how long the international structures and alliances he has so painstakingly rebuilt will last in the second Trump era.

Macron, the leader who questioned Biden about how long America would be back, was among the first leaders to congratulate Trump after he won back the presidency last week.

“Ready to work together as we did for four years,” <a href="https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1854073283420754221" target=_blank>Macron wrote on social media</a>. “With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.”

White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage, 2023

Gerald R. Ford Journalism Award for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency, 2021

White House Correspondents' Association's Merriman Smith Award, recognizing presidential news coverage under deadline pressure, 2016

Finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting, 2014

Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, 2013, "Broken City" series

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Matt Viser is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined The Post in October 2018, covering the midterms and the 2020 presidential election before moving over to the White House to cover President Biden's administration. He was previously deputy chief of the Washington bureau for the Boston Globe.

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