Biden and Sunak will discuss the economy, AI and Ukraine
President Biden was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain at the White House on Thursday to discuss economic cooperation, the rise of artificial intelligence and the war in Ukraine.
Mr Biden and Mr Sunak have met several times at diplomatic events in recent months, but the Prime Minister’s two-day visit to Washington is a high-profile one, including a bilateral meeting and a scheduled afternoon press conference.
Mr Sunak, who is 43 and has been in office since October, is under pressure to make Britain a competent and reliable global player after Brexit. He wants to strengthen economic ties in the West, in part to confront shared enemies such as China, as he noted ahead of the meeting.
“Just as interoperability between our armies has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries,” he said, “greater economic interoperability will give us a critical edge in the decades to come.”
Mr. Sunak is concerned about issues raised by AI, an area where developments are outpacing efforts to regulate them. He is also likely to discuss other business matters with Mr Biden, which may include reaching a modest agreement on critical minerals for electric vehiclessimilar to one the United States achieved with Japan in March.
While economic concerns are at the top of Mr Sunak’s agenda, the uptick in fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in recent days, as well as the destruction of a major dam in the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, is likely to using energy. of the conversation between the leaders.
Mr Sunak, like Mr Biden, is an outspoken supporter of Kiev. He told reporters on his flight to Washington that if Moscow were behind the attack, it would be “the biggest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, and would only demonstrate the new lows we would have seen.” of Russian aggression. .”
US military officials have watched with resignation as fighting intensifies in Europe, and Mr Biden, who had no public events scheduled for Wednesday, has reaffirmed his continued support for Kiev.
“We’re not leaving,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “We are going to help Ukraine.”
Despite their political differences – Mr Biden is a moderate liberal and Mr Sunak is a conservative – Thursday’s meeting will be an opportunity for both men to demonstrate a shared leadership style that emphasizes even diplomacy.
Mr. Biden has spent much of his tenure stabilizing the United States’ relationship with allies around the world in the wake of the Trump presidency. And Mr Sunak, who came to power after Boris Johnson’s bombastic tenure and Liz Truss’s very short tenure, has tried to establish himself as a more trustworthy resident of 10 Downing Street. Both have low approval ratings and both lead countries to have so far avoided an economic recession, but whose voters feel financially constrained by inflation.
“The economy will be part of that conversation,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters Wednesday. “They have one of the strongest, largest bilateral investment relationships in the world.”