WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden may skip a visit to Australia on an upcoming Asia trip due to the unfolding debate in Washington over the U.S. debt ceiling, the White House said on Tuesday.
John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said Biden would depart for Japan on Wednesday as scheduled but a subsequent stop in Australia is being reevaluated.
“We’re working though, thinking through, the rest of the trip right now,” Kirby said, as he noted Biden would meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australia’s Anthony Albanese at the G7 anyway in Hiroshima, Japan.
Biden is to attend a three-day summit of G7 leaders starting Friday. Afterwards, he is to make a brief, historic stop in Papua New Guinea, then travel to Australia for a meeting of the Japan, Australia, India, U.S. grouping known as the Quad countries.
The Treasury Department has estimated that the United States will go into a crippling default as early as June 1 if Congress does not lift the debt ceiling.
Kirby told reporters that if Biden’s trip “gets truncated or changed or modified in any way,” it should be seen as the president putting his priorities in the proper order.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Steve Holland;Editing by Chris Reese, Heather Timmons and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
