Trump's specter haunts Biden's G7 trip

When U.S. President Joe Biden meets world leaders at a lavish Italian resort this week he will be shadowed by an invisible and, for now, uninvited guest: Donald Trump.

The G7 summit in Puglia comes just five months before a nail-biting US presidential election that is not only testing America's democracy but also causing huge uncertainty for its allies.

Hanging over the leaders is the knowledge that it could be the 81-year-old Biden's last G7, and that Trump, with his America First policies and scorn for international organizations, could be on his way back.

Biden -- arriving at the summit under personal strain after traveling to Wilmington, Delaware following his son Hunter's conviction there on gun charges -- has admitted the political pressure he also faces.

"There's not a major international meeting I attend that... a world leader doesn't pull me aside as I'm leaving and say, 'He can't win. You can't let him win,'" Biden recently told Time magazine.

Many at the Group of Seven rich nations breathed a sigh of relief when the Democrat, an old-school believer in the post-World War II order, took office three years ago.

The group's summits with Trump had been chaotic affairs.

Take Canada in 2018, when Trump lashed out at host Justin Trudeau as "dishonest and weak" and retracted his endorsement of the joint statement. A famously awkward photo showed then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders standing grimly over Trump as he sat with his arms folded.

Or 2020, when Trump planned to hold the G7 at his own Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida, and to invite Russia despite its suspension from the group for its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Eventually he backed down on both -- and the summit was then canceled because of the Covid pandemic.

Biden recently told the story of his first G7 as president, in Britain in 2021.

"I said: 'Well, America's back.' (French President Emmanuel) Macron looked at me and he said, 'For how long? For how long?'" Biden said in his Time interview.

- 'Trump-proof' -

With polls showing Biden and Trump neck and neck, that question is more urgent than ever.

Will the G7 get another four years of Biden, who promises to support Ukraine against Russia and maintain international alliances and institutions in the face of an assertive Moscow and Beijing?

Or will leaders sit around the table in Canada next year with Trump, who says he would tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want" to NATO members that don't pay their dues, and frequently praises foreign autocrats?

The G7 has in fact been showing signs that it is trying to "Trump-proof" itself.

The Biden administration, for example, is pushing the group to agree on a US plan to front-load aid for Ukraine by using profits from seized Russian assets.

The plan would see the United States immediately stump up $50 billion in loans that would then be secured by interest on the assets -- rather than making smaller payments over time that could then be canceled by a Trump White House.

A source familiar with the G7 talks said delegations were looking to "truncate the downside risk from electoral politics."

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Sunday pointed to the wider issue of threats to democracy when asked about Biden's travels, including to the G7.

He told CNN democracy was "at risk all over the world," including in the United States, and said Biden would carry forward his mission to defend it "as long as he is president."

A grueling travel schedule that also saw Biden in France last week for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings will put America's oldest-ever president under scrutiny at the G7.

But analysts said Biden would use the G7 like he used his time in Normandy: to hammer home his message that Trump threatens democracy at home and abroad.

"He's demonstrating to our European allies that the United States is stalwart," Peter Loge, a media and public affairs professor at George Washington University, told AFP.

"That absolutely will be contrasted with Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon, who by definition cannot fully be trusted."