APEC leaders to open Lima summit as Trump prepares to return to office

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Representatives from 21 members representing the Pacific Rim are meeting in Peru on Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the first global summit since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory featuring several major world leaders.

The annual gathering brings together countries and members that jointly account for almost two-thirds of global GDP and half the world's trade, according to organizers. They confirmed heads of government attending in Lima include outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden, China's President Xi Jinping, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, among others, as the world wonders how a new U.S. government might upend global dynamics.

Leaders and other representatives will hold closed-door discussions in the morning among themselves, and in the afternoon with members of APEC's business advisory council. The council met Wednesday and called on APEC nations and members to boost inclusive growth and prioritize the needs of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those led by women and Indigenous entrepreneurs.

“While the global economy remains resilient, APEC economies are grappling with persistent inflation, economic disparities, high interest rates and the urgent need to increase investments for a green, climate-resilient future,” said council chairwoman Julia Torreblanca.

APEC is bound to be one of Biden's last before leaving office, and White House officials insist that his attendance as well as his subsequent visit to Brazil for the Group of 20 meeting next week will be substantive, with talks to focus on climate issues, global infrastructure, counter-narcotic efforts. For the first time since last year’s APEC forum, Biden will meet one-on-one with Chinese President Xi on Saturday. He will also meet with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol, Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba and Peru’s President Dina Boluarte.

The officials say Biden also will use the summits to press allies to keep up support for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia’s invasion and persist in negotiating an end to Israel's wars in Lebanon and Gaza.

Still, analysts say he will be overshadowed at APEC by Xi, who arrived Thursday and proceeded to inaugurate a $1.3 billion megaport that is perhaps the clearest sign of Latin America’s ongoing reorientation in the region.

The Chancay port will shave 10 days off shipping times to China, which has seen trade with South America boom over the past two decades. Peru’s economy minister in June said neighboring nations are actively modifying their supply chains to benefit from the port, in which total investment will top $3.5 billion.

Ahead of the inauguration at the port, 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Lima, locals told The Associated Press that the development hasn't buoyed their economic prospects. On the contrary, they said the port has impaired their ability to fish, threatening their livelihoods.

Discontent has been brewing in the middle-class San Borja neighborhood outside Lima’s Convention Center, where the APEC conference is sited. Metal barriers and police equipped with riot gear surround the perimeter where, for the past two days, anti-government protesters angry about a recent spate of gang-fueled violence have shouted slogans demanding that their wildly unpopular presiden t take action against the crime wave.

The rallies have devolved into scuffles with police, who used batons to drive away the more aggressive protesters on Thursday.

AP writer Isabel DeBre contributed

Police officers block anti-government protesters from making their way to Congress, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, left, and Peru's President Dina Boluarte pose for photos on the steps of the government palace during a welcoming ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Police detain an anti-government protester on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Children walk around in the Senor de la Soledad shantytown near a Chinese-funded port in Chancay, Peru, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

President Joe Biden greets Peru's Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen as he arrives at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, to attend the APEC Summit. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

An anti-government protester holds a sign during a demonstration on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Peru's President Dina Boluarte, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands after a ceremony to virtually inaugurate a Chinese-funded port in the city of Chancay, at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

A Peruvian honor guard stand in formation at the end of a welcoming ceremony for Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

U.S. President Joe Biden deplanes in Lima, Peru, to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Air Force members fix the red carpet before the arrival of Vietnam's President Luong Cuong in Lima, Peru, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Vietnam's President Luong Cuong, left, and Peru's President Dina Boluarte pose for photos on the steps of the government palace in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Peru's Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen, wave on the airport tarmac after Xi's arrival to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — It was a big day for Peru’s accidental president, Dina Boluarte, whose official schedule has been blank for months.

On Thursday, the high-profile Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima thrust Boluarte — among the world's least popular presidents, with a mere 4% public approval rating — into the bright lights of a convention center packed with world leaders, prominent CEOs and visiting dignitaries.

It's not just that Boluarte, long a low-profile and low-paid civil servant, has never before rolled out the red carpet for powerful leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping since taking office in December 2022. It's that she has hardly been seen outside her brick mansion in weeks. Local journalists count more than 100 days since she last spoke to a reporter.

Her recent reclusion is not especially surprising. She became president because she was the vice-president of Pedro Castillo, a former rural schoolteacher with no previous political experience who was ousted when he tried to dissolve Congress and disband the courts. A wave of violent protests rocked the country, marring Boluarte's first weeks in power.

The president's popularity tanked even more in March, when the sight of Rolex watches gleaming from her wrist prompted police to raid her home and prosecutors to launch an investigation into her alleged unlawful enrichment.

A survey by polling company Ipsos showed her approval drop to just 4%. The poll was conducted Oct. 10-11, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. No president in Peru has had a worse rating in at least 40 years.

Powerful lawmakers satisfied with their lavish salaries have resisted calls to impeach her but quietly absorbed most of her duties, leaving Boluarte with little to do.

The latest lightning rod for public ire has been a growing trend of violent extortion by criminal gangs in Lima's hardscrabble outskirts. Protesters accusing the government of indifference to rising crime have taken to the streets across Peru.

On Wednesday, protesters blocked highways and rallied in Peru's southeast Arequipa region, drawing a police crackdown that left six injured by rubber bullets. Lima residents also took advantage of the international spotlight to stage protests this week while Biden and 20 other world leaders prepared to gather for the APEC summit.

After a string of killings targeting bus drivers who failed to pay extortion money last month sent a chill through Lima, public transport drivers launched several strikes that paralyzed the city of 10 million. The government has declared a state of emergency and promised a strong response, but the persistence of violent attacks has sharpened anger against Boluarte.

Fearing all that could go wrong in yanking Peru's wildly unpopular leader out of the shadows and onto the world stage this week, the government left nothing to chance.

Authorities declared Thursday through Saturday as nonworking holidays and closed schools, ordering millions of school children and civil servants to stay home the entire week to keep the streets clear. At a highway underpass near the convention center hosting APEC on Monday, workers scrubbed the spray-painted slogan “Dina Asesina,” or “Dina, the Murderer” from a concrete wall.

“The event is certainly important for Peru, but the government is so scared of losing control of the streets that it’s overreacting, putting inappropriate measures in place,” said Eduardo Dargent, a political scientist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

Officials have pleaded with citizens not to protest.

“It would be very regrettable if, in the days that we receive visitors from the world's 21 most powerful economies, we show a bad spectacle, a spectacle of conflict,” Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen said in a recent press conference. President Boluarte went further, branding protests “traitors."

On Thursday, protesters said that the specter of conflict at APEC was exactly what they wanted.

As Boluarte, donning a sparkly pink dress and pearls, greeted Chinese President Xi with a ceremonial honor guard and trumpet flourish, riot police scuffled with anti-government protesters a few blocks away.

“She's trying to take advantage of this moment in front of the TV cameras to pretend she's the president of Peru,” said Betty Mendoza, a 35-year-old protester brandishing portraits of the 50 civilian demonstrators killed in the 2022 social unrest.

“She does not represent us,” Mendoza said of Boluarte. “We did not elect her.”

At one point Thursday, masked protesters surged toward a line of police near the conference site, shoving officers who pushed back and beat them with batons. Medics rushed to attend to several teenage boys clutching their heads and yelping in pain.

“My grandson is growing up in a country where violence is being normalized,” said 54-year-old Freda Reyes, who had come to protest from the eastern working-class district of Santa Anita where she said 10 of her neighbors had been killed by criminal gangs this month.

The last time Peru hosted APEC, in 2016, a wave of protests similarly sprung up around the country. At the time, workers were striking over their low salaries and Lima residents venting over their city's notoriously derelict public infrastructure.

That remains a concern. On Wednesday, a fire raced up the sides of a multi-story plastic toy warehouse and engulfed six other houses near the presidential palace, causing no injuries but raising a pall of black smoke visible from the red carpet where Boluarte was bestowing a medal on her Malaysian counterpart.

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Associated Press writer Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report.

U.S. President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with US Ambassador to Peru Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath on the airport tarmac ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

U.S. President Joe Biden deplanes in Lima, Peru, to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

An anti-government protester holds a photo of Peru's President Dina Boluarte with a sash that reads in Spanish, "Assassin" during a demonstration on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Peru's President Dina Boluarte and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both right, watch the inauguration of a Chinese-funded port in the city of Chancay, during a virtual ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

U.S. President Joe Biden, left, Peru's Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen, center, and US Ambassador to Peru Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath wave on the airport tarmac ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Peru's President Dina Boluarte, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands after a ceremony to virtually inaugurate a Chinese-funded port in the city of Chancay, at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

China's President Xi Jinping, center, and Peru's President Dina Boluarte face the honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Peru's President Dina Boluarte, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk down the red carpet during a welcome ceremony at the government palace in Lima, Peru, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)