Presented by

ABOUT-FACE — The biggest diplomatic week of Joe Biden’s term appears to be unraveling before it even begins.

The president had hoped to project strength in his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. For months, the administration has planned to use the event to unveil Biden’s new economic agreement for the region — the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework — showing Xi that Beijing’s neighbors are aligning with the U.S.

But domestic politics are upending that carefully choreographed program.

In recent days, the U.S. has pulled back on trade negotiations in the Indo-Pacific pact after criticism from senior Senate Democrats. Now, four officials with knowledge of the conversations say that the so-called trade pillar of IPEF is unlikely to be finished this week.

The reason? Pushback from Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, who is facing a tough reelection campaign next year in an increasingly red and trade-skeptical Ohio.

Brown urged the administration late last week to drop the trade pillar altogether, saying he’d publicly oppose the entire package if it wasn’t punted. Other senior Democrats, like Sen. Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), soon piled on. And though IPEF isn’t subject to congressional approval, their concerns found resonance in the Biden White House, where many officials still view backlash against global trade deals as a key reason why Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.

Brown’s comments “spooked some folks” in the administration, said an official familiar with the talks, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter. “People are taking the time to make sure they do right by him,” said the source. “He’s up next year.”

It’s an abrupt about-face after months of intensive negotiations — including a last minute round of talks this week — aimed at finalizing the trade pillar before the APEC summit. While most trading partners are publicly still on board with the negotiations, they’re seething behind the scenes.

The U.S. move “is quite a shock,” said one IPEF participant, also granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The situation now is “very, very difficult” between the trading partners, added another.

The move is already being slammed by U.S. industry groups, who point out that this is the second time in less than a decade that the U.S. has stepped away from trade talks in Asia, after former President Donald Trump walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

“It would be a terrible blow to U.S. credibility, after we negotiated and then withdrew from the TPP, if we were to do something similar with the IPEF,” said the Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president for international policy, John Murphy. “So we need this spiral of timidity and U.S. trade policy to be brought to a halt, because it really threatens the competitiveness of U.S. companies internationally.”

To foreign policy observers, it’s all just another example of American political dysfunction that analysts say Xi will try to seize on this week. In recent weeks, the Biden administration has also pulled its support from e-commerce proposals at the World Trade Organization, a decision that split economic policymakers from the White House and U.S. Trade Representative’s office. And the entire APEC summit is taking place as congressional lawmakers struggle to fund the federal government.

All of that internal dissent, “feeds the narrative that the U.S. is unreliable and China represents an alternative,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank. “It’s impossible to ignore how domestic polarization here in the U.S. is impacting views of the U.S. abroad, and as long as Xi can present himself as a compelling alternative, I think unfortunately that message is going to continue to gain resonance.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ShiaKapos.

— Embattled Supreme Court adopts code of conduct: The Supreme Court has adopted a formal ethics code for the first time in its history, bowing to public and congressional critics who demanded such a policy in the wake of reports about unreported luxury travel by justices and influence campaigns aimed at the court. All nine justices endorsed the code released today. It generally tracks existing rules for lower court judges but includes some special provisions addressing the Supreme Court’s “unique institutional setting.”

— Abigail Spanberger launches bid for Virginia governor: Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a centrist Democrat from Virginia, announced today that she will not seek reelection to the House but instead will run for Virginia governor in 2025. Spanberger’s decision to leave her congressional seat creates a tough job for Democrats who will have to defend her competitive district to have a shot at retaking the majority. Her bid comes a week after Virginia Democrats retook full control of the General Assembly after two years of divided power.

— Maryanne Trump Barry, the former president’s older sister and a retired federal judge, dies at 86: Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge and former president Donald Trump‘s oldest sister, has died at age 86 at her home in New York. Until her retirement in 2019, Barry was a senior judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a level below the Supreme Court. Before becoming a judge, Barry became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1974 and was nominated to the federal court in New Jersey by former President Ronald Reagan. She was later elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals by former President Bill Clinton. She retired in 2019 amid an investigation into her family’s tax practices.

FITTING EXIT — When Tim Scott announced the end of his presidential bid from the studio of his house in Hanahan, S.C., some campaign aides and allies of the senator joked among themselves that the abrupt exit was fitting, reports POLITICO. For months, Scott’s campaign, mired in low single digits, had been beset by a lack of organization and poor communication about the campaign’s strategy, said one Republican operative supporting Scott. And compared to some of his Republican rivals, Scott had hardly been aggressive with campaign travel. It made sense, the operative said, that “Tim, from his home studio, made this announcement without the staff knowing.”

CHRISTIE’S IN — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has amassed support from the 80,000 donors needed to qualify for the fourth Republican presidential debate in December, as he pushes to remain on the stage even while one of his rivals from last week’s debate, Sen. Tim Scott, just suspended his campaign, reports NBC News.

DONOR POACHER — Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is poaching donors from her Republican competitors, fueling a surge in her presidential campaign and opening the door to support from other major financial contributors, reports Bloomberg. Haley lured in 250 contributors — including billionaire Harlan Crow and Bruce Kovner of Caxton Alternative Management, who had previously given at least $200 to other Republican campaigns — during the third quarter, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. Those donors collectively gave her $218,000, with the vast majority of that sum coming after her breakout first debate in late August.

SCOTT FUNDRAISER TO BACK HALEY — A top Tim Scott backer is co-hosting a high-end fundraiser for Nikki Haley, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO today — and sent less than 24 hours after Scott announced he was suspending his presidential campaign. Eric Levine, a New York-based donor who was raising money for Scott, the South Carolina senator, is listed among the eight people hosting the Dec. 4 event in New York City for Haley, who has been on the upswing in the GOP primary.

CAMERON CRAZIES — David Cameron, the former U.K. prime minister stunningly vaulted back into front-line British politics today, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appointed him foreign secretary.

And despite Cameron’s role in instigating the Brexit referendum which caused years of friction between the EU and the U.K., at least some of the Continent’s top politicians are happy to see him back, reports POLITICO EU.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský and Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna were among those who publicly congratulated Cameron.

In Sunak’s Cabinet reshuffle today, he kicked out controversial Home Secretary Suella Braverman, after a row with the police over pro-Palestinian marches in London, and replaced her with ex-Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. But Sunak’s appointment of Cameron comes with risk — and could get awkward for the British PM.

TANGLED WEB — A Ukrainian MP who in 2019 helped former U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in his search for dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden has been charged with treason, reports POLITICO EU.

Oleksandr Dubinsky, together with ex-Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach and ex-prosecutor Kostyantyn Kulyk, had joined an organization formed by chiefs of Russia’s Military Intelligence (GRU), Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said in a statement today.

Although SBU did not name the MP in the statement, the photos and video materials attached to it identify Dubinsky, whose alias, “Buratino,” was taken from a 1930s Soviet “Pinocchio” knockoff.

Dubinsky met Giuliani during his visit to Kyiv in December 2019 while the former New York City mayor and failed U.S. presidential candidate was filming a documentary aimed at discrediting an impeachment probe into Trump.

JUNO PASSES JUPITER — Jupiter’s biggest moon appears to have a salty underground ocean — one of the key requirements for life to exist. The NASA spacecraft Juno recently spotted evidence of organic compounds and salts on Ganymede on a recent journey, where it got within 650 miles of the large moon. Ganymede, a moon that is larger than the planet Mercury, has its own magnetic field. Scientists believe that there could be an ocean layer under Ganymede’s icy crust, or even multiple layers of oceans and ice. Briley Lewis writes for Popular Science how this salty ocean does not prove life exists there, but is necessary for life to exist at all.