By Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter In Ottawa
23:18 24 Mar 2023, updated 00:31 25 Mar 2023
- President Biden defended the administration’s handling of the recent U.S. banking failures including the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank
- ‘I don’t take China lightly. I don’t take Russia lightly. But I think we vastly overestimate it,’ said Biden
- Biden and Trudeau to attend a gala dinner on Friday evening
U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ offering a united front on Friday against authoritarian regimes and migration as Biden visited Ottawa – just days after the leaders of China and Russia held a Moscow summit.
During a joint press conference, Biden did reveal moments of defensiveness – specifically with the recent U.S. banking crisis and the Russian and Chinese alliance.
When asked about anxiety in the U.S. financial markets, Biden quipped: ‘Have you ever known Wall Street not in consternation?’
‘I think we’ve done a pretty damn good job. People’s savings are secure,’ Biden said. ‘I think it’s going to take a little while for things to just calm down, but I don’t see anything that’s on the horizon that’s about to explode.’
Biden also warned that some allies exaggerate the threat of Russia and China forming an alliance, noting that China has not provided weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine.
To emphasize his point, he lowered his voice to a whisper to say: ‘They haven’t yet.’
‘I don’t take China lightly. I don’t take Russia lightly. But I think we vastly overestimate it,’ the president said.
He conceded that the two countries could still unite, which would make things ‘significantly worse.’
The president said the U.S. had expanded alliances with NATO, the G7, South Korea and the Quad nations of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan
‘The West has coalesced, significantly more. We have united coalitions,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen that happen with China and Russia or anybody else in the world. We’re in a situation – the United States – where NATO is stronger. We’re all together.’
Chinese President Jinping Xi made a three-day visit to Moscow, where he referred to Vladimir Putin as his ‘dear friend’ and called for a cease-fire in Ukraine that would reward Moscow’s invasion by cementing its territorial gains.
The Biden administration has rejected such a plan.
Also on the trip, Biden and Trudeau announced a deal to close Roxham Road, a point of massive migration on the northern border, and Canada, in return, will allow 15,000 slots for migrants from the Western Hemisphere to enter legally.
‘I applaud Canada stepping up with similar programs, opening new legal pathways for 1500 migrants to come to Canada from countries in the Western Hemisphere at the same time,’ Biden said in a speech to Parliament earlier Friday.
Both the U.S. and Canada are seeing an increase in migration across the northern border – more than 39,000 refugees entered Canada last year via unofficial crossings, the vast majority via Roxham Road, which links Quebec and New York State.
At issue was a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires asylum-seekers already in the US to petition there rather than show up at a Canadian port of entry.
But that policy does not apply to Roxham Road because it’s an unauthorized entry point – literally a road that dead-ends into the border and then picks up on the other side.
Trudeau said last month the only way to shut down Roxham Road is to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement. And that is what the two countries did.
‘We couldn’t simply shut down Roxham Road and hope that everything would resolve itself because we would have had problems,’ the prime minister said at the press conference.
‘The border is very long – people would have looked for other places to cross. And so that’s why we chose to modernize the Safe Third Country Agreement.’
