WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden told American diplomats on Monday in his final foreign policy speech that the United States is “winning the worldwide competition” in a new era of global economics and technology.
“The United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago,” he said in a speech at the State Department, adding “America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker, (and) we have not gone to war to make these things happen”.
The remarks will be just one of several events the administration has planned to mark Biden’s final week in office, after which he’ll close out more than a half-century in public service by attending Trump’s second inauguration to mark the peaceful transfer of power he was denied four years ago when Trump attempted to overturn his 2020 election loss.
The president’s final foreign policy speech was initially set to be delivered as a bookend to Biden’s final trip aboard as president, a visit to Rome that was scuttled to allow him to oversee the federal response to the wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles and the surrounding area.
According to White House sources, it was intended as reflection on the 46th president’s 50-plus years in national politics, beginning with his improbable victory in the 1972 Delaware Senate race as a 29-year-old unknown, leading to three decades in the upper chamber, then the vice presidency under Barack Obama, and ultimately the presidency.