Instead, he will limp into an abruptly truncated journey facing concerns the US debt ceiling row is about to tear up the global economy.

Biden arrives on Thursday in Hiroshima, one of the two cities hit by US atomic bombs in 1945, a closing chapter to World War II and the start of an era of US leadership across the Pacific Beijing now seeks to supplant.

He will meet leaders from the rest of the G7 club, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, that has been crucial in the US-led drive to enforce unprecedented economic sanctions on China-ally Russia for invading Ukraine.

However, visits next week to Papua New Guinea and to a Sydney, Australia, meeting of the Quad, comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US, were canceled so Biden can rush back home Sunday and negotiate with Republican opponents on the debt crisis.

For a president who often warns democracies are in an existential fight to prove their viability against the world's autocracies, it is a sobering moment.

"It's extraordinarily hard... to go to the G7 and talk about economic unity against Russia, economic unity against China, when the dysfunction is coming from inside the house," Josh Lipsky, at the Atlantic Council, said.

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