Biden’s Slow-Walk on Ambassador Picks Leaves Him Trailing Trump
- Key envoy slots to China, India, Mexico and Iraq are unfilled
- Biden lags behind predecessors, but his picks are more diverse
Joe Biden arriving at the Group of Seven Leaders Summit, in Newquay, U.K.
Photographer: Neil Hall/EPA/Bloomberg
President Joe Biden’s foreign-policy slogan is “America’s Back,” but he’s fallen behind even predecessor Donald Trump’s record-slow pace in nominating the envoys whose job it is to take that message to the world.
Ambassador posts in key countries including China, India, Afghanistan, Mexico and Iraq are all vacant -- and of those, only Mexico has a formal nominee awaiting Senate confirmation. In Biden’s first trip abroad last month, there was no ambassador to greet him on the airport tarmac in his three stops: the U.K., Belgium and Switzerland. Nor does he have ambassadors to the other members of the Group of Seven, the world’s biggest economies.