By CHRIS MEGERIAN and JOSH BOAK | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Joe Biden plunged in­to this week’s Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as aim­ing to push for re­gion­al progress in ad­dress­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, cli­mate change and mi­gra­tion de­spite the ab­sence of some no­table coun­ter­parts from Latin Amer­i­ca.

With the U.S. play­ing host to the gath­er­ing for the first time since 1994, Biden and his team set about strength­en­ing re­la­tion­ships and mov­ing past the con­sid­er­able dra­ma over which world lead­ers would par­tic­i­pate.

“At this sum­mit,” Biden said in his open­ing re­marks Wednes­day night, “we have an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to come to­geth­er around some bold ideas, am­bi­tious ac­tions and to demon­strate to our peo­ple the in­cred­i­ble pow­er of democ­ra­cies to de­liv­er con­crete ben­e­fits and make life bet­ter for every­one. Every­one.”

The U.S. pres­i­dent was ex­pect­ed to spend Thurs­day sit­ting down with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau and Brazil­ian Pres­i­dent Jair Bol­sonaro, as well as de­liv­er a speech to the broad­er group of at­ten­dees. Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris was to meet with Caribbean lead­ers to talk about clean en­er­gy, and first la­dy Jill Biden was host­ing a brunch to build re­la­tion­ships with fel­low spous­es.

The day is ex­pect­ed to end with a din­ner at the Get­ty Vil­la, an art mu­se­um with views of the Pa­cif­ic Ocean.

A range of ac­tivists from the Unit­ed States and dis­si­dents from the re­gion have been gath­er­ing around the Los An­ge­les con­ven­tion cen­tre, where most of the meet­ings are tak­ing place, to pro­mote their caus­es.

There could be ten­sion when Biden meets for the first time with Bol­sonaro, an al­ly of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Bol­sonaro is run­ning for a sec­ond term and has been cast­ing doubt on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of his coun­try’s elec­tions, some­thing that has alarmed of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton.

When Bol­sonaro ac­cept­ed an in­vi­ta­tion to the sum­mit, he asked that Biden not con­front him over his elec­tion at­tacks, ac­cord­ing to three of the Brazil­ian leader’s Cab­i­net min­is­ters who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Jake Sul­li­van, Biden’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, re­ject­ed the idea that Biden had agreed to any con­di­tions for the meet­ing with Bol­sonaro.

“There are no top­ics off lim­its in any bi­lat­er­al the pres­i­dent does, in­clud­ing with Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro,” Sul­li­van told re­porters. He added, “I do an­tic­i­pate that the pres­i­dent will dis­cuss open, free, fair and trans­par­ent de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions.”

Biden be­gan em­pha­siz­ing the theme on Wednes­day as he wel­comed lead­ers to the sum­mit.

“Democ­ra­cy is a hall­mark of our re­gion,” he said.

It al­so be­came a stick­ing point when plan­ning the guest list for the event. Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent An­drés Manuel López Obrador want­ed the lead­ers of Venezuela, Cu­ba and Nicaragua to be in­vit­ed, but the U.S. re­sist­ed be­cause it con­sid­ers them au­thor­i­tar­i­ans.

Ul­ti­mate­ly an agree­ment could not be reached, and López Obrador de­cid­ed not to at­tend. Nei­ther did the pres­i­dents of Hon­duras, Guatemala and El Sal­vador.

Hon­duras For­eign Re­la­tions Sec­re­tary Ed­uar­do En­rique Reina spoke about Pres­i­dent Xiomara Cas­tro’s de­ci­sion to stay away.

“The pres­i­dent was very clear that this should be a sum­mit with­out ex­clu­sions,” Reina said. Still, he said the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment was ready to work on com­mon prob­lems, say­ing, “The po­lit­i­cal will to work with all coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as is there.”

It’s a re­minder that re­la­tions with Latin Amer­i­ca have proved tricky for the ad­min­is­tra­tion even as it so­lid­i­fies ties in Eu­rope, where Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine has prompt­ed clos­er co­op­er­a­tion, and in Asia, where Chi­na’s ris­ing in­flu­ence has rat­tled some coun­tries in the re­gion.

One chal­lenge is the un­mis­tak­able pow­er im­bal­ance in the hemi­sphere. World Bank da­ta shows that the U.S. econ­o­my is more than 14 times the size of Brazil, the next-largest econ­o­my at the sum­mit. The sanc­tions the U.S. and its al­lies levied against Rus­sia are much hard­er in Brazil, which im­ports fer­til­iz­er from Rus­sia. And trade da­ta in­di­cate that the re­gion has deep­en­ing ties with Chi­na, which has al­so in­vest­ed in the re­gion.

This leaves the U.S. in a po­si­tion of show­ing Latin Amer­i­ca why a tighter re­la­tion­ship with Wash­ing­ton would be more ben­e­fi­cial at a time when economies are still strug­gling to emerge from the pan­dem­ic and in­fla­tion has wors­ened con­di­tions.

Sul­li­van pledged that the U.S. “will be putting spe­cif­ic dol­lars in­to pro­duc­ing tan­gi­ble re­sults” in the re­gion, with work­er train­ing and mon­ey for food se­cu­ri­ty, among oth­er things.

“When you tal­ly all that up and look at the prac­ti­cal im­pact of what the sum­mit de­liv­er­ables from the Unit­ed States will mean for the pub­lic sphere, it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly more im­pact­ful on the ac­tu­al lives and liveli­hoods of the peo­ple of this re­gion than the kinds of ex­trac­tive projects that Chi­na has been in­vest­ed in,” he said.

Suzanne Clark, CEO of the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce, said in a blog post that her or­ga­ni­za­tion is part­ner­ing with the U.S. State De­part­ment to host a re­lat­ed CEO sum­mit. The cham­ber’s top list­ed pri­or­i­ties are in­creas­ing rule of law and trade with Latin Amer­i­ca coun­tries.

“The pan­dem­ic’s im­pact has been ex­ac­er­bat­ed by stag­nant eco­nom­ic growth and long­stand­ing ills such as pover­ty, in­equal­i­ty, in­se­cu­ri­ty, cor­rup­tion, and in­ad­e­quate health care,” Clark said. “As the hemi­sphere emerges from the cloud of COVID, new chal­lenges such as ris­ing in­fla­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in the food and en­er­gy sec­tors, threat­en to fur­ther ex­pose the re­gion’s fragili­ty.”

Har­ris has been em­pha­siz­ing pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment to ad­dress the re­gion’s chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to re­duc­ing mi­gra­tion by of­fer­ing more eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty in peo­ple’s home coun­tries.

“One of the things that is with­out ques­tion, when we are able to im­prove the pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of our neigh­bours, we as a na­tion ben­e­fit,” she told re­porters Wednes­day. “So, the work that we have been do­ing in the sum­mit has been to bring CEOs to­geth­er, heads of state of a num­ber of the coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere are go­ing to be here to talk about how we can con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate.”

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Josh Boak re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Deb­o­ra Al­vares in Brasil­ia, Brazil, and El­liot Sp­a­gat in Los An­ge­les con­tributed to this re­port.