Later in the day, Biden and first lady Jill Biden met with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, before traveling to Brussels for a meeting of NATO heads of state and government.
Here’s what to know:
- Biden has been asking other G-7 leaders to form a unified front against China’s use of forced labor, arguing Saturday that a stronger stance is a moral and practical imperative. However, not all of the allies have been as enthusiastic.
- Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took an unexpectedly sharp tone with European Union leaders on Saturday after discussing post-Brexit rules for Northern Ireland, in a break from the message of unity that G-7 leaders have been trying to send during the summit.
- The shadow of former president Donald Trump has loomed over the G-7 summit, with Biden facing questions about the state of U.S. democracy in his first trip abroad as president.
Biden congratulates Israeli lawmakers on approving new government, calls new leader Naftali Bennett
Biden on Sunday congratulated Israeli lawmakers for approving a new governing coalition led by Naftali Bennett, ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as prime minister.
“On behalf of the American people, I congratulate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and all the members of the new Israeli cabinet. I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations,” Biden said in a written statement.
Biden, whose party is shifting toward a tougher stance on Israel, also reaffirmed his administration’s “unwavering” support for the country in the statement and in a subsequent phone call to Bennett.
Biden “expressed his firm intent to deepen cooperation between the United States and Israel on the many challenges and opportunities facing the region,” the White House said in a readout of the call.
The White House also noted that the two “agreed that they and their teams would consult closely on all matters related to regional security, including Iran,” as well as “on efforts to advance peace, security, and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians.”
Biden said Queen asked about Putin and Xi, has invitation to the White House
Biden said Queen Elizabeth II asked him about world leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, during their brief meeting at Windsor Castle on Sunday.
“She was very gracious,” Biden told reporters on the tarmac at London Heathrow Airport, before departing for Brussels. “She reminded me of my mother.”
Biden, who was greeted at Windsor Castle with a Guard of Honor upon his arrival, also commented on the size of the castle grounds.
“I said … we could fit the White House in the courtyard,” he said.
Biden said the queen also asked what life in the White House was like. When reporters asked whether he had invited her to the White House, Biden answered, “Yes.”
Bidens arrive at Windsor Castle, meet with Queen Elizabeth II
Biden and the first lady arrived Sunday afternoon at Windsor Castle, where they met with the queen.
Sporting aviator sunglasses, Biden stood alongside Elizabeth beneath a tent as they were greeted by the Guard of Honor. He later participated in an inspection of the guardsmen by himself, before the group entered Windsor Castle for afternoon tea, which was closed to the media.
As they strolled, Biden carefully avoided walking in front of the queen, a faux pas committed by his predecessor that generated a viral video and some mild alarm over the breach in royal protocol.
Biden is the 13th U.S. president the queen has met in the past seven decades, and he is the fifth to be received at Windsor Castle.
The two first met in November 1982, when Biden — then a U.S. senator from Delaware — traveled to the United Kingdom for a meeting of the British-American Parliamentary Group and participated in an audience with her, the White House said Sunday based on available records of Biden’s Senate travel.
Climate activists criticize lack of details on ending fossil fuels at summit
G-7 leaders vowed Sunday to move away from public financing of coal projects worldwide and to make good on their long-standing commitments to help vulnerable nations bear the rising costs of climate change.
But activists who had hoped for more concrete and ambitious pledges raised a key question: Where are the details?
“This summit feels like a broken record of the same old promises,” John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said in a statement. He praised the new commitment to ending overseas investment in coal but added, “without agreeing to end all new fossil fuel projects — something that must be delivered this year if we are to limit dangerous rises in global temperature — this plan falls very short.”
Sauven and other activists also scoffed at the latest assurance from leaders to finally deliver on a pledge they have not kept: that rich nations will mobilize at least $100 billion annually to help developing countries build greener economies and deal with the intensifying catastrophes caused by climate change.
The G-7 leaders talked boldly about the need to tackle climate change, both in their joint communique and after the gathering. No leader had more stark language than Biden, whose commitment to the issue represents a dramatic shift from the Trump years.
“Transitioning the world to cleaner energy sources is urgent,” Biden said. “It’s essential if we’re going to beat the climate [crisis] … It is the existential problem facing humanity.”
Johnson said that while every G-7 nation had pledged to wipe out its contributions to climate change by 2050, “we need to make sure we’re achieving that as fast as we can and helping developing countries at the same time.”
Such aspirations are welcome, advocates said, but countries have to move beyond rhetoric and agree on detailed plans for action ahead of a key United Nations climate summit this fall in Glasgow.
“G-7 leaders served us a bad pasty. On the outside the deal looks good — but there’s little detail on the inside,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former U.N. climate envoy.
Other advocates welcomed even incremental progress on the climate front — particularly given that leaders also face crises such as the pandemic and its economic fallout — even if it wasn’t as fast or sweeping as they might want.
“We need this kind of political momentum to spur even more ambitious climate action,” Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, global lead on climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund. “Sadly, the comments from the G-7 were not ‘one giant leap for [human]kind’ that we need and expected. It was more like ‘one [positive] small step.’”
Biden says he’s ‘open’ to Putin’s proposal to exchange cyber criminals
Biden said Sunday he would be willing to forge an agreement with Russia to exchange cyber criminals who mounted attacks on the respective nations, raising the prospect of an area of cooperation ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva this week.
The comments follow calls in Congress for the Biden administration to hold Russia accountable for alleged ransomware attacks staged from Russian soil by cyber criminals that disrupted a major U.S. gasoline pipeline and a large meatpacking conglomerate in recent weeks.
Biden said the extradition proposal, first raised by Putin, was “potentially a good sign of progress.” He told reporters at a news conference that he’s “open” to extraditing U.S.-based hackers to Russia if “in fact” they are “committing those crimes.”
Putin’s proposal came amid a low in the relationship between Moscow and Washington, and was aired on Russian state television on Sunday.
“If we agree to extradite criminals, then of course Russia will do that, we will do that, but only if the other side, in this case the United States, agrees to the same and will extradite the criminals in question to the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
Biden says he is ‘satisfied’ with G-7 communique language on China
Biden said he is satisfied with the way the G-7 leaders’ joint communique calls out China, and he urged China to be more transparent and “act more responsibly” on human rights.
“As you know, last time the G-7 met, there was no mention of China. But this time there is mention of China,” he said.
Biden said the G-7 leaders agreed to call out human rights abuses, to coordinate a strategy to “deal with China nonmarket policies that undermine competition,” and to take action against forced labor in numerous industries.
He said there is “plenty of action on China” in the communique, though he acknowledged, “I’m sure my colleagues think there’s things they think they could improve that they wanted, but I’m satisfied.”
“I think you’re going to see straightforward dealing with China,” Biden said. “And again, we’re not looking, as I’ve told Xi Jinping myself, I’m not looking for conflict. Where we cooperate, we’ll cooperate. Where we disagree, I’m going to state it frankly, and we’re going to respond to actions that are inconsistent.”
Biden also called on China to “act more responsibly in terms of international norms on human rights and transparency” and mentioned the need for access for international experts to help determine the origins of the coronavirus.
“We haven’t had access to the laboratories to determine whether or not — I have not reached a conclusion because our intelligence community is not certain yet whether or not this was a consequence from the marketplace about bat interfacing with animals in the environment that caused this covid-19 or whether it was an experiment gone awry in the laboratory,” Biden said. “It’s important to know the answer to that because we have to have access.”
Biden vows to continue to provide vaccines to world’s poorest nations, hints U.S. may make another donation
Biden vowed Sunday that the United States would continue to provide vaccines to the world’s poorest countries to curb the coronavirus pandemic, hinting that it may make another substantial donation of vaccine doses next year.
The president said he did not want to make commitments before they were finalized but added that the United States may “be in a position to provide another billion” doses over the next two years. Biden announced on Thursday that the United States had purchased 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to donate to low- and middle-income countries.
Biden said the G-7 leaders agreed that wealthy democracies need to continue to assist the world in vaccinating the global population, stressing the threat the virus poses as it continues to spread.
“It is also the correct thing to do in terms of our own health, our own security,” he said. “You can’t build a wall high enough to keep out new strains.”
Biden also said the G-7 leaders agreed to help countries with the logistics of vaccinating their citizens while assisting them in building the capacity to manufacture vaccines.
“There was a clear consensus among all our colleagues at the G-7 that this wasn’t the end,” he said. “We were going to stay at it until we’re able to provide for the needs of the whole world.”
Biden agrees with Putin that U.S.-Russia relations are ‘at a low point’
Biden said Sunday that he agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assessment that U.S.-Russia relations are “at a low point,” ahead of the two leaders’ meeting on Wednesday, but also defended his response to what he called Putin’s violations of international norms.
“I think he’s right it’s a low point, and it depends how he responds to acting consistent with international norms, which in many cases he has not,” Biden told reporters on the final day of the G-7 summit.
Biden said he felt he responded appropriately upon learning from U.S. intelligence that Putin had tried to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election, as well as in cybersecurity breaches.
“He was engaged in those activities. I did respond and made it clear that I’d respond again,” Biden said.
Biden also defended his choice not to conduct a joint news conference with Putin after their meeting this week, saying part of the reason was he didn’t want people to get distracted by the optics and wonder — “Did they shake hands?” and “Who talked the most?”
“This is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference to try to embarrass each other. It’s about making myself very clear what the conditions are to get a better relationship with Russia. We’re not looking for conflict,” Biden said.
Later, he said there was “no guarantee” anyone could change Putin’s behavior but suggested Russia had enough problems of its own, including dealing with its coronavirus pandemic and recovering its economy.
“Autocrats have enormous power. They don’t have to answer to a public. And the fact is that it may very well be if I respond in kind, which I will, that it doesn’t dissuade him. He wants to keep going,” Biden said. “But they have also bitten off some real problems they’re going to have trouble chewing on.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to downplay expectations for Biden’s meeting with Putin.
“It’s not going to be a light-switch moment,” Blinken said. “This is a beginning of testing the proposition, the question about whether Russia is interested in a more stable, predictable relationship. … We’re not going to get an answer from that one meeting. We need to see what happens at that meeting.”
G-7 leaders commit to joint actions against forced labor, ransomware, corruption
G-7 leaders on Sunday announced commitments to removing forced labor from global supply chains, to fighting ransomware attacks and to taking collective action to combat corruption, the White House said.
Biden and other G-7 leaders “remain deeply concerned by the use of all forms of forced labor in global supply chains, including state-sponsored forced labor of vulnerable groups and minorities and supply chains of the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors — the main supply chains of concern in Xinjiang,” the White House said in a statement, calling out reported use of forced labor in China.
On ransomware attacks, several of which have hit key industries in many G-7 countries in recent weeks, the leaders vowed that such malicious activity would be investigated and prosecuted.
“When it comes to ransomware, no responsible country should be engaged in harboring criminals who engage in that practice. That’s very much on his agenda,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to when Biden meets with Russian leader Vladimir Putin later this week.
The G-7 leaders also committed to fighting corruption by tackling the abuse of shell companies and money laundering through real estate transactions.
“We know that corruption undermines the trust in government, siphons off public resources, makes economies much less competitive and constitutes a threat to our security,” Biden said in a news conference Sunday.
Boris Johnson touts Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, discusses need to prevent future pandemic
In a news conference Sunday, Britain’s prime minister called the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University the “world’s most popular vaccine” and noted that it was developed only a couple hundred miles from Cornwall.
“Today, over half a billion people are safe because of the development and production of that vaccine,” Johnson said, attributing its popularity in part to it being “sold at cost to the world.”
Britain authorized the vaccine from Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company in December. In April, medical regulators in Britain and the European Union said rare but sometimes deadly blood clots are a potential side effect of the vaccine, though the European Medicines Agency stressed then that the benefits of the vaccine still outweigh the risks.
Johnson said Sunday that scientists behind the shot were recognized in recent days by the British queen.
Johnson also said discussions during the summit focused on topics beyond addressing the ongoing pandemic — to global recovery and to preventing similar public health crises in the future.
“Our countries are committed to lead, and we were clear that we all need to build back better in a way that delivers for all our people and for the people of the world,” he said. “That means preventing a pandemic like this from ever happening again. Particularly by establishing a global pandemic radar, which will spot new diseases before they get the chance to spread. It means ensuring that our future prosperity benefits all the citizens of our countries and all the citizens of the world.”
G-7 leaders wrap up summit pledging to defeat covid-19, ‘build back better’ and tackle climate change
G-7 leaders on Sunday wrapped up their annual summit, a three-day sprint in Cornwall that a White House official described as “unusually substantive and productive.” The leaders focused on ending the coronavirus pandemic and helping countries recover from it economically in a more equitable way.
“We, the leaders of the Group of Seven, met in Cornwall … determined to beat covid-19 and build back better,” the leaders stated in a joint communique Sunday, echoing a slogan the Biden administration has used in its domestic economic recovery efforts.
The G-7 leaders kicked off the summit by committing to donate 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to countries in need and called for a “transparent, expert-led and science-based” investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.
Other priorities on their shared agenda included ensuring multinational corporations pay their fair share in global taxes and in battling climate change. The G-7 leaders committed to net zero emissions no later than 2050 and to cutting their collective emissions in half by 2030, as well as to limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees.
On Friday, G-7 leaders endorsed a minimum global tax rate of at least 15 percent, marking a win for the Biden administration, which for months has been pushing for a global minimum tax on large, multinational corporations to help pay for his ambitious domestic agenda.
On Sunday, G-7 leaders committed to removing forced labor from global supply chains, fighting ransomware attacks — several of which have hit key industries in G-7 countries in recent weeks — and fighting corruption by tackling misuse of shell companies.
Biden asks G-7 to take a tougher line on China, but not all allies are enthusiastic
CARBIS BAY, England — Biden is asking leaders of other wealthy democracies to form a unified front against China’s use of forced labor, arguing Saturday that a stronger line is a moral and practical imperative.
Members of the Group of Seven economic club also agreed on a joint alternative to heavy-handed Chinese economic expansion tactics that can leave poorer nations saddled with debt, although China’s trillion-dollar infrastructure program has a vast head start.
Countering China is fast becoming a central element of Biden’s foreign policy, despite extensive trade ties and hopes for cooperation to combat climate change and other priorities.
But some of the leaders Biden is seeing for the annual G-7 session are less eager to prod Beijing over its labor practices. It appeared unlikely that Biden could persuade them to fully back his proposal to call out China for its use of forced labor, including of the Uyghur ethnic and religious minority.
Did Biden give Boris Johnson a $6,000 bike and get a Wikipedia printout in return? Not exactly.
There are few things more awkward than an uneven gift exchange.
So when reports began circulating that Biden had given British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a $6,000 custom-made bicycle at the Group of Seven summit — only to receive a photo of Frederick Douglass that had been printed out from Wikipedia in exchange — it seemed like a particularly cringeworthy moment in international diplomacy.
“The total lack of respect for Biden captured in one gift exchange,” Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, tweeted.
The reality, however, is more complicated.
For starters, the State Department paid $1,800 for the bicycle, Bilenky Cycle Works told The Washington Post. The small Philadelphia-based business typically charges $6,000 for a similar lightweight model. And the custom Union Jack graphics, matching helmet, bronze and silver badge displaying crisscrossed British and American flags on the head tube, and rush fees would have brought the total cost to $10,000 under normal circumstances.
Analysis: As Biden tries to rally allies, he faces questions abroad about the state of U.S. democracy
If anyone doubted that much of the world felt a great sense of relief when Joe Biden became president, a new survey of attitudes in countries around the world confirms as much. But the survey also underscores the degree to which people in other countries have concerns about the health of America’s democracy after Donald Trump’s presidency.
The survey, produced by Pew Research Center, was released just as Biden was beginning his first trip abroad as president with meetings in which reestablishing U.S. leadership among allies and rallying democracies is a major priority.
The survey showed an overnight change in attitudes across 12 countries since the end of Trump’s presidency: Favorable impressions of the United States jumped from 34 percent before Trump left office to 62 percent now. And while 17 percent had said they had confidence “in the U.S. president to do the right thing regarding world affairs” at the end of Trump’s presidency, 75 percent express confidence in the president today.
The not-so-good news from the survey is that despite the confidence that people abroad express about the change in administrations, there are continuing doubts about the strength of American democracy.