APEC closes in Peru with China’s President Xi front and center as Trump whiplash looms

LIMA, Peru — After two days of meetings in Lima that rarely ventured beyond platitudes in discussing the strategies of robust economic engagement, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum wrapped up Saturday with a spirit of detente that many terror the annual summit may not view again for the next four years.

The 21 leaders from economies bordering the Pacific, including U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, descended on Peru this week at a period when America’s incoming president, Donald Trump, has vowed to withdraw the U.S. from its leadership of a global free trade agenda.

Few could assist noting that Biden’s late entrance to the traditional APEC household photo Saturday lent itself to political metaphor, as the rest of the leaders took their place on the risers before looking around to discover Biden missing. They tittered for five awkward minutes before a seemingly dazed Biden arrived and took the stage in the far back corner.

Chinese President Xi, who draped himself in the banner of globalization this week inaugurating a massive $1.3 billion megaport in Peru and using his speeches to decline protectionism, scored the best spot onstage for the photo, front and center. The leaders all wore bark-hued wool scarves from Peru — in the APEC custom of posing in some garb representative of the host country.

Biden left the stage as reporters shouted questions, asking for a response to this being his last APEC summit, and one of his last major global events as U.S. president.

Much of the exchange about APEC this year centers on the heightened trade and safety competition between the U.S. and China. Biden and Xi will sit down later Saturday for their third and final conference of Biden’s tenure. They last met a year ago, at APEC in California.