Biden remains confident
“Serious differences” in the US debt dispute
05/20/2023, 08:39 am
On Friday, Republicans surprisingly ended talks with the White House about the country’s debt limit. There are “serious differences,” the US government said. This will also be discussed at the G7 summit attended by President Biden.
According to the White House, negotiations on raising the debt ceiling in the USA are proving difficult. “We have serious differences,” said US government spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. US President Joe Biden is confident that there is a way forward and that a solution is possible. Biden was also closely involved in the negotiations during his participation in the G7 summit.
Recently, the tough negotiations had even been temporarily interrupted – after both sides had previously sent out encouraging signals. Republican negotiators left talks on Friday just about an hour after they began, US media reported. In the evening, the parties returned to the negotiating table.
The background to this is that the US government is threatened with default at the beginning of June if Biden’s team does not reach an agreement with the Republicans in Congress on raising the debt ceiling by then. In the USA, parliament sets such a limit at irregular intervals and determines how much money the state can borrow.
“Topic of interest at the G7 summit”
This time, the procedure has degenerated into bitter partisan wrangling that is dangerous for the US and beyond: A default by the world’s largest economy could trigger a global financial crisis and an economic downturn. Because of the domestic political dispute, Biden’s participation in the G7 summit in Japan was at times even on the brink. He finally canceled the second part of his trip abroad – a visit to Papua New Guinea and Australia – to return to Washington on Sunday right after the Hiroshima deliberations.
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the debt dispute will also be discussed at the presidential talks in Hiroshima. “It’s definitely an issue of interest here at the G7,” Sullivan said. Other countries wanted to know how the negotiations were going. “And the President has expressed confidence that he believes an outcome can be reached that will prevent a default.” However, he emphasized that the topic did not trigger “an alarm” at the G7 summit.