President Joe Biden gestures as he boards Air Force One for a trip to South Korea and Japan on May 19, 2022, in Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.
President Joe Biden arrived here Friday on a mission to reaffirm a key alliance at an uncertain moment in East Asia, punctuated by growing warnings from US intelligence that North Korea may conduct a missile test during the President's visit.
Even as the war in Ukraine has preoccupied Washington -- and took up the first half of Biden's day before he departed for Asia -- provocations from North Korea have intensified and China continues flexing its economic and military might.
Biden wants to show his top partners here he can focus both eastward and westward, and that the United States has resources to help uphold democracy and sovereignty around the world.
"So much of the future of the world is going to be written here, in the Indo-Pacific, in the next several decades," Biden said, reiterating his desire to continue focusing on Asia.
"We're standing at an inflection point in history, where the decisions we make today will have far-reaching impact on the world we're leaving to our children tomorrow," Biden said.
He was speaking at a Samsung plant making semiconductors, critical components for a myriad of products. The Biden administration has worked over the past months to alleviate a shortage of semiconductors that has hurt American manufacturing, including cars and trucks, in part because shipments of some Chinese-made components were stalled due to Covid-19-induced factory shutdowns. Biden has prioritized separating American industry from Chinese supply chain snags, both through domestic production and sourcing key parts outside China.
In brief remarks after a tour of the factory, Biden tied together the chip shortage with the war in Ukraine, saying the US and its allies must reduce their dependence on essential items from autocratic regimes.
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