Day 1 of US-ASEAN Summit wraps up at Sunnylands
Update 10:00 p.m. The Presidential Motorcade was spotted leaving Sunnylands after the President met with ASEAN leaders for a working dinner at Sunnylands. President Obama and the ASEAN leaders are expected to return to Sunnylands at 9:30 Tuesday morning.
Update 8:00 p.m. The motorcade left Thunderbird at 7:54 pm local time and took POTUS back to Sunnylands for a working dinner with ASEAN leaders. Pool is holding in the white tent.
Update 7:00 p.m. The President’s motorcade left Sunnylands at 6:37 pm for the seven-minute motorcade to the vacation home. He is expected to head back shortly for dinner at Sunnylands. The pool holds just outside the neighborhood.
President Barack Obama welcomed leaders from 10 Southeast Asian countries on Monday for a two-day summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), concluding his Coachella Valley visit that saw him golfing with old friends and reacting to the death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
It’s the first U.S. gathering for the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
China is not a member of the association. But its territorial claims over disputed waters have raised international concerns, caused friction with some member countries and will top the summit agenda.
Obama was joined by Secretary of State John Kerry at Sunnylands for the gathering, scheduled to run through Tuesday. The summit is aimed at strengthening the new U.S.-ASEAN strategic
partnership, forged last November during a presidential trip to Malaysia.
“This unprecedented gathering — the first hosted by the United States with the ASEAN leaders — builds on the deeper partnership that the United States has forged with ASEAN since 2009 and will further advance the Administration’s rebalance to Asia and the Pacific,” according to a White
House statement.
The meeting, which is also expected to drive progress on a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, was not without its detractors however. Hundreds of protesters lined the streets near Sunnylands, decrying the impact of the increased globalization.
“While out-of-touch politicians discuss plans to ratify and even expand the TPP, working people in California and around the globe are uniting to defeat trade deals that offshort jobs, drive down wages and hurt the environment,” said Lua Masumi, state director for Citizens Trade Campaign.
“As a result of public anger, the TPP is already dead-on-arrival in Congress this year and the leading presidential candidates from both parties are also speaking out against it,” she said.
Representatives from organized labor and environmentalists also railed against the pact.
“The world cannot afford the TPP,” said Jacob Zehender, of the Sierra Club of San Diego. “Beyond just failing to mention the term `climate change’ in its thousands of pages, the TPP would provide corporations with new tools for attacking the environmental and consumer protections at home and abroad, while simultaneously increasing the export of fracked gas and other climate-disrupting fossil fuels.”
Air Force One landed just after 11:30 a.m. Friday at Palm Springs International Airport, after being diverted briefly to fly over mountainous terrain that the president recently designated as national monuments.
Obama spent three days golfing with Honolulu boyhood friends and frequent golf partners — Greg Orme, Mike Ramos and Bobby Titcomb — at the Stadium Course at PGA West in La Quinta, and Sunday back at Ellison’s private course at his 249-acre Rancho Mirage estate.
Viewer Video: President Obama golfs in Rancho Mirage
The death of Justice Scalia roiled the nation’s political waters this weekend. Other than the standard somber and polite statement from the White House, the president did not address the court, now split between red and blue 4-4.
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