WASHINGTON — While President Joe Biden’s primary residence is still the White House for a few more months, he plans to host world leaders at another home this weekend: his house in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden will hold bilateral meetings with the heads of Australia, India and Japan there for his final summit of the “Quad,” an alliance he decided to elevate during his first year in office. NBC News is the first to report that he will host the meetings at his Delaware home.
Biden specifically wanted to incorporate “personal touches” at the two-day event, emphasizing the importance of “deep personal relationships” as central to his foreign policy approach, a senior White House official said.
During both group discussions and individual conversations this weekend, Biden is likely to proudly showcase his home, known by aides as “Lake House” because of the manmade lake on its grounds. He expects to share with them significant milestone moments during his career that have been marked there, including where he learned four years ago that he had been elected president.
To wrap up their work and highlight that philosophy, Biden has invited the leaders to an “intimate” dinner Saturday at his high school, Archmere Academy, a place of particular significance to him, the official said.
Many of the traditional engagements for a summit of this kind will also occur at Archmere, the White House said Thursday, including the more formal leaders-level meeting, as well as an event tied to Biden’s "cancer moonshot."
Biden has recalled weeding Archmere's gardens, cleaning its windows and painting the iron fence that surrounds it as part of a work-study program to pay for the private school. But, he wrote in his 2008 memoir, among his proudest accomplishments there was giving public speeches, having worked hard to overcome a childhood stutter.
The gathering will be the first time as president that Biden has ever asked a foreign leader to visit Wilmington, a reflection of his closeness with each dignitary: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“These are personal relationships that mean a lot to him. And he believes personal relationships are important to foreign policy,” John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said in an interview.
Biden first discussed hosting the summit in his hometown after Kishida brought leaders of the G7 alliance to his hometown, Hiroshima, last year.
“The prime minister is rightly very proud of Hiroshima and his experiences there. And that made an impact on the president, because he feels the same way about Wilmington,” Kirby said.
With the hometown summit, the White House hopes to project a strong alliance with Indo-Pacific partners, especially at a time when countering China’s rising influence is a top priority for the Biden administration.
The Quad has been an important component of that, and the leaders are expected to announce ways to ensure the alliance is “enduring” for the long term.
Officials also expect possible agreements on health security, natural disaster response and maritime partnership in the South China Sea.
It will be the sixth time they have all met — the fourth time in person — since Biden promoted the “Quad” to the leader level in 2021.
Biden has also had each prime minister to the White House for official state visits, an honor reserved for the closest allies. It will be both Kishida’s and Biden’s final summit, with Kishida having announced this year he would stand down as his party leader.
Originally, it was India’s turn to hold the event this year, but when the dates appeared too close to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the U.S. and India decided to swap responsibilities.
India is now scheduled to host the next summit in 2025, raising the possibility that Vice President Kamala Harris, whose mother immigrated from India, would make a significant symbolic return if she is elected in November.
Starting next month, Biden hopes to cement some of his foreign policy legacy with the final overseas trips of his time in office.
While the timing is still being finalized, Biden is expected to travel to Africa, a trip that he had originally indicated would happen last year. When he was asked last week whether he will go to Angola, a country no American president has ever visited, he gave reporters a thumbs-up.
In November, Biden plans to attend his final Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in Peru and G20 summit in Brazil, just days after the presidential election.
