US President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will attend the first day of an Asia-Pacific leaders' summit Friday ahead of a face-to-face meeting under a cloud of diplomatic uncertainty cast by Donald Trump's election victory. Biden and Xi are due to hold talks Saturday, in what a US administration official said will probably be the last meeting between the sitting leaders of the world's largest economies before Trump is sworn in in January. With the Republican president-elect having signaled a confrontational approach to Beijing for his second term, the bilateral meeting will be a closely watched affair.
Xi and Biden arrived in Lima Thursday along with other world leaders for a two-day heads-of-state meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping. APEC, created in 1989 with the goal of regional trade liberalization, brings together 21 economies that jointly represent about 60 percent of world GDP and over 40 percent of global commerce. The summit program was to focus on trade and investment for what proponents dubbed inclusive growth.
But uncertainty over Trump's next moves now clouds the agenda -- as it does for the COP29 climate talks underway in Azerbaijan, and a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week. On Thursday, APEC ministers, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, held their own meeting behind closed doors in Lima to set the tone for the summit to follow. Trump announced this week he will replace Blinken with Senator Marco Rubio.