President Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom at the White House on Thursday to discuss economic cooperation, as well as the impact of artificial intelligence and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Although both leaders have met in the past few months at diplomatic events, the prime minister’s two-day visit to Washington is a highly anticipated engagement that includes a bilateral meeting and a planned afternoon press conference.
With the aim of establishing post-Brexit Britain as a reliable global player, Mr. Sunak is looking to enhance economic ties in the West both to overcome shared adversaries like China and to shore up the country’s reputation. “Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries,” he said, “greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead.”
Mr. Sunak is also concerned about the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), as the field is progressing faster than attempts to govern it. He is expected to discuss other business issues with Mr. Biden, including the possibility of reaching a minor deal on critical minerals for electric vehicles, similar to an agreement the US made with Japan in March.
Although economic topics top the agenda, the increase in fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in recent days and the destruction of a major dam on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine on Tuesday will likely consume much of the leaders’ conversation. Mr. Sunak, like Mr. Biden, has been a staunch supporter of Kyiv. If Moscow is found to be behind the attack, he stated, it “would constitute the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war and demonstrate the new lows that we would have seen from Russian aggression.”
American military officials have watched with dismay as the fighting in Europe intensifies, and Mr. Biden, who had no public events on Wednesday, has reiterated his administration’s support for Kyiv: “We’re going to help Ukraine. We are not leaving,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
Despite their political differences, with Mr. Biden being a moderate liberal and Mr. Sunak a conservative, Thursday’s meeting will be a chance for both leaders to display a shared leadership style that prioritizes diplomacy and level-headedness. Since taking office, Mr. Biden has spent much of his time stabilizing the US’s relationships with allies worldwide in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidency. Meanwhile, Mr. Sunak, who assumed office in October after Boris Johnson’s bombastic tenure and Liz Truss’s brief stint, has tried to establish himself as a dependable prime minister. Both leaders have low approval ratings, and both lead countries that have not yet experienced economic recession but whose voters feel financially constrained by inflation.
“The economy will be part of that conversation,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary on Wednesday. “They have one of the strongest, largest bilateral investment relationships in the world.”
