One day after it was reported that Joe Biden has Covid, White House officials informed the Argentine government this Friday that the bilateral between Presidents Joe Biden and Alberto Fernández was finally postponed without a date.
In principle it was going to be this Tuesday, July 26 and Fernández had planned to travel with the Minister of Economy Silvina Batakis.
Biden was diagnosed with Covid this Thursday and although it was reported that he has mild symptoms, he must be isolated for at least five days. Also, the US president is 79 years old.
The information that the bilateral was postponed without a definite date was transmitted to the Argentine ambassador in Washington, Jorge Argüello, who in turn transmitted it to Fernández. Argüello is, together with Ambassador Marc Stanley, part of the organization of this trip initially planned for Monday the 25th, but also postponed by the US president’s agenda for Tuesday the 26th.
By the way, on Thursday, when he was at the Mercosur summit in Paraguay, Fernández received a message from Argüello that Biden had tested positive for COVID. It had been transmitted to the ambassador by Juan González, the White House adviser for Latin America. Both Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero and Argüello sent wishes for him to get better soon.
This Friday, Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, reported in a statement that the president’s Covid-19 symptoms had improved after his first full day of treatment with the antiviral Paxlovid. But that he continued with a runny nose, fatigue and a “loose” cough. After having a temperature Thursday night, it came down with a Tylenol, O’Connor said. Pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation “remain completely normal,” he added. Biden is vaccinated against COVID, whose maximum alert policy is contrary to Donald Trump’s denialism, which he also had.
For President Alberto Fernández, this trip to Washington was an important trip. He was going to travel on Sunday with Foreign Minister Cafiero and the Secretary for Strategic Affairs, Gustavo Béliz.
Alberto F.’s trip to Washington had begun to be assembled at the beginning of June, after the telephone conversation between the two leaders, in which the Democrat invited him in principle for this Monday the 25th. Both Argüello and Béliz had been there since the day Biden took office seeking a bilateral one, which did not occur because among other issues, Biden, in the past a deep Latin Americanist, quickly focused on other continents, on China, and now on his support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
Biden and Alberto Fernández have spoken on another occasion by phone and exchanged a brief greeting at the G20 Summit in Rome in November last year.
In the days of arduous negotiations with private bondholders and later with the International Monetary Fund, the government always sought explicit gestures of support from the Democratic administration. There were, and Washington worked on a support plan but, for example, former minister Martín Guzmán never managed to get Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to receive it.
That is why it bothered them so much when, on a trip to Moscow on February 3, Alberto Fernández first told Vladimir Putin that he wanted Argentina to be Russia’s gateway to Latin America, and then that he wanted to break dependence on the Argentina with the Monetary Fund and the United States. By then Russian troops were already stationed around the Ukraine. The invasion was on February 24.
But what bothered the White House the most, and they made it known, were the following statements by Alberto F. in Barbados: “I have read that I have bitten the hand of someone who helped me… Who helped me? The European countries helped me with the Fund, China helped me, Russia helped me, the American countries and I stop there. I know who did a lot for that loan to be given. I do know that, the previous government of the United States. I don’t say it, the Fund says it.”
Minutes later, Argüello, Béliz, Cafiero had to go out to repair the link. In political matters, the Americans always considered Argentina and the Fernández government “an ally even in the differences.” These differences make the policy of pressure that the White House, Republican as well as Democrat, maintains on the regimes of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, to a lesser extent.
Kirchnerism always extended its hand to them, although to a lesser extent to Nicaragua. And at the recent Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Alberto Fernández reproached Biden for not inviting the leaders of those three countries, whom he will receive at the CELAC summit at the end of this year.