After Tuesday’s midterm elections, President Biden is shifting his attention abroad.
Before all the ballots are counted, Biden will set off on a seven-day diplomatic tour of Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia to attend four global summits and navigate an array of foreign policy priorities.
But Tuesday’s results could weaken Biden’s hand with foreign leaders as he grapples with diplomatic challenges on climate change, Ukraine and China.
“The president will ask countries to make difficult choices — whether that’s advancing climate goals or shifting supply chains away from their reliance on Chinese companies,” said Kori Schake, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute who served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “That will be much more difficult to persuade other countries of if people have doubts whether President Biden can persuade the United States Congress to do hard things.”
Biden’s itinerary includes a short stop Friday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he’ll attend the U.N. climate conference to assert American credibility on climate change. He will then travel to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to attend the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations summit before arriving in Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 summit, an annual gathering of leaders from the world’s most powerful nations.
The high-profile event puts Biden in the same room as Chinese President Xi Jinping, who tightened his grip on power after winning a third term as China’s Communist Party leader in September, and potentially Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is expected travel to Bali more than eight months after his forces invaded Ukraine.
Past presidents have also pivoted to foreign policy in the wake of midterm defeats. President Obama took a similar 10-day trip to the region to attend a suite of Asian-focused summits in 2010, when Democrats lost 63 House seats and the party’s control of the chamber. President Trump flew to France three days after Republicans lost their House majority in the 2018 midterms to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
President Clinton, who oversaw the loss of Democratic control of Congress in 1994, made his mark on foreign policy by brokering peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Northern Ireland and aiding the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“The world stage is a great place for the president to turn because that’s an area where he has more control than when dealing with domestic policy, where he needs Congress to pass stuff,” said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and head of the presidential leadership initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It’s a good pivot for a president.”
But even Biden’s crowning foreign policy achievement — reinvigorating the NATO alliance in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — is under threat as House Republicans raise the idea of cutting off foreign aid to Kyiv. Part of Biden’s challenge will be convincing European allies to continue support for Ukraine amid a deepening energy crisis and shortage of food, exacerbated by high inflation.
White House officials and advisors argue that potential Democratic losses Tuesday are not a rejection of Biden’s policies but instead in line with historical trends. Since 1934, the president’s party has lost an average of 28 House seats and four Senate seats in all midterm elections, according to the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.
