01 April 2009
Obama Makes Debut on World Stage
White House adopts collaborative approach to foreign policy at G20 meeting
Washington — President Obama’s arrival at the G20 financial summit in London gives his administration an opportunity to showcase its collaborative approach to foreign and economic policies.
“I came here to put forward our ideas, but I also came here to listen, and not to lecture,” Obama said in an April 1 joint press appearance with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “To confront a crisis that knows no borders, we have a responsibility to coordinate our actions and to focus on common ground, not on our occasional differences. If we do, I believe we can make enormous progress.”
The two leaders met ahead of a gathering of leaders from the 20 advanced and emerging market countries that account for 85 percent of the global economy. Together, these leaders will work to formulate a common set of measures, including strengthening financial regulations, fostering economic growth, supporting emerging markets, rejecting protectionism and continuing foreign humanitarian aid programs serving the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, to confront the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
“History shows us that when nations fail to cooperate, when they turn away from one another, when they turn inward, the price for our people only grows,” Obama said. “We will move forward with a sense of common purpose. We have to do what's necessary to restore growth and to pursue the reforms that can stabilize our financial system well into the future. We have to reject protectionism and accelerate our efforts to support emerging markets. And we have to put in place a structure that can sustain our cooperation in the months and years ahead.”
Obama acknowledged international criticism of the U.S. financial regulatory system’s role in fomenting the crisis, but said many other nations share comparable challenges overseeing increasingly complex and highly integrated global capital markets.
Obama said when the world is fearful, “there is a strong tendency to look for somebody to blame.”
“At this point, I'm less interested in identifying blame than [in] fixing the problem,” the president said.
Domestically, the United States is moving forward aggressively on economic recovery and reform, Obama said, enacting a $787 billion economic stimulus package and a parallel bank rescue to get credit flowing again, and new regulatory legislation to restore confidence in American financial institutions. “We've passed through an era of profound irresponsibility,” Obama said.
While media reports have highlighted significant differences among G20 leaders on the nature of economic stimulus and financial regulations, Obama said that his administration’s international consultations suggest that the separation among the various parties has been vastly overstated: “I think there has been an extraordinary convergence, and I'm absolutely confident that the United States, as a peer of these other countries, will help to lead us through this very difficult time.”
Obama also met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to announce a renewed effort to make deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles as part of a wider “reset” in relations between Washington and Moscow.
In addition, the American president held talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on an initiative to deepen economic and security cooperation.
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama rounded out their first day in London with a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, followed by a G20 leaders’ reception.
“Every single nation who's here has a stake in the other,” Obama said. “We won't solve all our problems in the next few days, but we can make real and unprecedented progress. We have an obligation to keep working at it until the burden on ordinary people is lifted, until we've achieved the kind of steady growth that creates jobs and advances prosperity for people everywhere.”
A transcript of remarks by Obama and Brown is available on America.gov.
