US President Joseph Biden will cut short his trip to Asia in order to have time to agree on a national debt ceiling and avoid a possible default, reports NBCNews. According to the channel, the head of the White House will not go to the QUAD summit in Australia.
The president will travel to Hiroshima on Wednesday for the G7 summit. After that, en route to Sydney, he was due to visit Papua New Guinea, where he planned to discuss regional security, economic and climate support. But Washington also canceled that part of the trip.
Biden made the decision to return home as early as Sunday, immediately after the conclusion of the G7, “to ensure that Congress takes action before the deadline to avoid a default,” the channel’s source said. Previously, the Head of State intended to spend 8 of the 16 days that remained in the country abroad before the expected date of default.
Failure to reach an agreement threatens the possibility of a default on the country’s $31.4 trillion debt, a dire scenario for the US economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that the government could find itself unable to pay its obligations as early as June 1.
The disagreement over raising the national debt ceiling is that Republicans in Congress are demanding budget cuts, while the Biden administration is unwilling to make concessions.
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