President Joe Biden reflected on the progress he made with other world leaders at this weekend’s G-20 summit, including ways to combat climate change, as the event wrapped up in Rome on Sunday.
Kicking off his first solo press conference in four months, Biden characterized his meetings over the last three days as “productive” and said America has reclaimed its role on the world stage working with its allies.
Biden touted goals that were accomplished during the summit, including leaders across the world endorsing a 15% global minimum tax, and international coordination to address the supply chain crunch across the globe.
During the summit, Biden highlighted American leadership on the world stage, a campaign pledge he was looking to deliver on.
“I’m looking forward to continuing to make progress on critical global issues as we head off to Glasgow because of what we’ve seen again here in Rome, what I think is the power of America showing up and working with our allies and partners to make progress on issues that matter to all of us,” Biden said
President Biden said on Sunday that the world can’t immediately stop using oil and said OPEC and Russia need to pump more of it, even as he pushes the world to pledge to cut climate-changing carbon emissions at the Glasgow climate summit this week.
After three days of meeting with world leaders in Rome, where he attended the G-20 summit, Biden said he is worried that surging energy costs are hurting working class families.
“It has profound impact on working class families just to get back and forth to work,” Biden said. He talked about the issue with other major oil-consuming countries at the G-20, but told reporters he was reluctant to reveal any of their plans to spur producers to pump more.
Biden says he isn’t worried about his sagging approval ratings rather he’s confident his big legislative package will soon pass
Asked about his poll numbers, Biden said “the polls are going to go up and down and up and down,” adding that he didn’t seek the presidency for the ratings.
Biden’s approval rating has sunk well below 50%. An NBC News poll released Sunday that found 70% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, eight points worse than in August.
Biden said he’s confident the U.S. can meet his goal of cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 from 2005 levels, even though a key climate measure was cut out of the legislative package currently before Congress. He said that sweeping package of climate measures and social safety net spending, combined with the infrastructure bill passed by the Senate; together contain $900 billion in climate and resilience measures.
Lawmakers within his own party have struggled to agree on the scope and cost of his plan. “It’s going to pass in my view – but we’ll see,” he said, saying a vote could happen soon.
He acknowledge that climate activists found the G-20 agreement on climate measures underwhelming, but blamed Russia, China and Saudi Arabia for not making commitments. “I found it disappointing myself,” he said.
