White House plays up summit initiatives amid absence of key figures
LOS ANGELES >> The White House on Wednesday pushed back against the notion that the absence of several key leaders from this week's Summit for the Americas amounts to a backslide for democracy as administration officials sought to play up efforts on food security, climate and other areas to be discussed at this week's summit.
As President Joe Biden made his way to Los Angeles for the summit, top advisers argued that the summit wasn't a lost cause just because Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other leaders have decided to stay away from the gathering over the U.S. excluding Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — all countries that send large numbers of migrants to the U.S. and neighboring countries — because they are led by authoritarians.
Among the new programs Biden is expected to unveil in the coming days are a $300 million in food security financing initiative, a new Caribbean climate partnership that will help Caribbean countries access low carbon energy sources, and a program to train 500,000 health workers in the Americas over the next five years.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the White House “will be putting specific dollars into producing tangible results.”
“When you tally all that up and look at the practical impact of what the summit deliverables from the United States will mean for the public sphere, it is significantly more impactful on the actual lives and livelihoods of the people of this region than the kinds of extractive projects that China has been invested in,” Sullivan told reporters Wednesday while aboard Air Force One.
Migration has taken center stage at an assembly of Western Hemisphere leaders, reflecting its emergence as a top foreign policy issue at this week's summit, but it has largely been overshadowed by differences over Biden's invitation list.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a summit event Wednesday called differences in political outlooks a “strength” of the region.