| The metaphor wrote itself. In the last major international meeting of his single term, President Joe Biden was a no-show for a Monday photo-op of leaders at the annual summit of the Group of 20 major economies, held this year in Brazil. U.S. officials blamed “logistical issues” on Biden being too late to join the set piece, which also proceeded without Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. As right-wing commentators crowed on social media, it didn’t matter that Biden stood front-and-center the next day on the dais in Rio de Janeiro for another photo of the assembled leaders. For Biden, the trip that was supposed to be his swan song seemed to underscore his status as a lame duck. He became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest, where he hailed the progress made by his administration and that of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in advancing shared climate goals. But looming over his foray into the jungle was the imminent return to the White House of President-elect Donald Trump, who is bent on reversing much of Biden’s environmental record and again pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.  |  | | | In his first (and presumably last) visit to South America as president, Biden also found himself in China’s shadow. He met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Lima, the Peruvian capital, where they held frank discussions on the tough state of U.S.-China relations and cautiously looked toward Trump’s ascension. Xi cut a larger figure than Biden in Peru and Brazil, where the Chinese leader received red-carpet welcomes as a state guest. The pomp befitted China’s rapidly expanding trade and investment footprint in the region. Biden, meanwhile, did not give interviews to journalists during his trip, which drew to a close Tuesday. The most consequential move he made while abroad — his decision to authorize Ukraine to use a powerful American long-range weapon for limited strikes into Russian territory — had nothing to do with the hemisphere. In briefings with reporters, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, kept focus on how Biden “will reinforce America’s leading role” in the Asia-Pacific and suggested Biden’s foreign policy legacy is “substantially defined” by his administration’s defense of Ukraine.  | | | For onlookers at the G-20, the mood was somber. Biden’s farewells prefigure a more uncertain era, with Trump poised to once more roil the global scene with his ultranationalism, protectionism and unpredictability. Biden entered office promising a restoration of U.S. leadership in world affairs, to reassure allies and reinforce a flagging international order. Biden’s record on this front is substantial, if mixed: He galvanized NATO, leading its coordinated defense of Kyiv, and bolstered a range of security partnerships in Asia. But he also is seen as presiding over the Taliban’s shock takeover of Afghanistan and as complicit in Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the ongoing destruction of Gaza in a war that is reviled in much of the Global South. Instead of a “restoration,” the Democrats’ loss to Trump reduces Biden’s time in office to an intermission within a larger, angrier Trumpist age. “We knew had [Vice President] Kamala Harris won, this would have been a consecration for President Biden,” a senior diplomat from a G-20 nation told me from Rio, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists. “Of course, we also knew the opposite could happen.” Brazil’s Lula has far more affinity to Biden than to Trump, though the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have created a degree of distance between the two center-left administrations. His government is battling Trump’s favored billionaire, Elon Musk, whose social media platform X fell afoul of the Brazilian legal system. And Brazil’s own polarization mirrors that of the United States; on Tuesday, Brazilian authorities arrested five military officers accused of plotting a coup to kill Lula and overthrow his government after he defeated Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 elections. In the G-20′s joint communiqué, discussion of Ukraine and Gaza was kept to generalities, and Lula secured a signature win in the creation of a global pact to combat hunger and poverty. Wherever that initiative goes, it reflects the former labor union leader’s political priorities and was pushed through despite Argentina’s firebrand libertarian President Javier Milei initially trying to play spoiler. “Although generic, it is a positive surprise for Brazil,” Thomas Traumann, an independent political consultant and former Brazilian government official, told the Associated Press. “There was a moment when there was a risk of no declaration at all. Despite the caveats, it is a good result for Lula.” As Trump returns, those diminished expectations might make the G-20 a more resilient institution. The bloc gets maligned for not standing for very much, but no other grouping incorporates the West’s major players alongside Russia, China and the emerging powers of the developing world. “The G-20 may be the one format that actually withstands these turbulent times better,” Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told me on the phone from Rio. That’s because the G-20 is “low ambition,” doesn’t get carried away in the project of making “sweeping” ideological claims and provides a real “platform and space for actual engagement” between adversaries, Shidore explained. He added that it also “lacks the international bureaucracy and negative associations” that the United Nations’ system often engenders in U.S. conservatives, and certainly some figures within Trump’s camp. “This chaotic world order is not because of the rise of the Global South,” the G-20 diplomat told me, suggesting that the emerging powers of the developing world could actually be exemplars of stability and pragmatism as Trump engages in a great power competition with China and trade wars with the rest of the world. They described the challenge of the coming years as one of “managing” — “it’s not conflict, it’s not confrontation, it’s not making a [political] point.” And there’ll be at least one venerable politico watching it all from sidelines. “As you know, this is my last G-20 summit,” Biden said on his way out. “We’ve made progress together, but I urge you to keep going — and I’m sure you will, regardless of my urging or not.” | 
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