Biden begins foreign diplomacy with the telephone

Washington (CNN)President Joe Biden had been inside the White House for only two hours on Wednesday before finding an opportunity to recall one of his many intimate meals with a foreign leader who, now they are both presidents, can officially be called a counterpart.

"When I was with Xi Jinping -- and I was on the Tibetan plateau with him -- and he asked me in a private dinner, he and I, and we each had an interpreter, he said, 'Can you define America for me?' " Biden recounted during a swearing-in ceremony for new staffers. He said he responded simply: "Possibilities."

The anecdote, harkening to his 2011 supper inside a Chengdu hotel restaurant, was designed to offer Biden's view of the American dream as he assumed the presidency. But it also acted as an intentional reminder that he enters the job with a long history of cultivating international actors who he will now face as an equal -- and, in some cases, an adversary.

He launches his global efforts Friday afternoon with a call to Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a reliably traditional first diplomatic outing that nonetheless comes laden with some tension: Biden has revoked a permit for the $9 billion Keystone XL pipeline, which would funnel oil from Alberta across the border to the United States.

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Trudeau, who in the Donald Trumpera staked out a world position as a champion of combating climate change, nevertheless said he was "disappointed" in the decision.

It was highly unlikely the matter would cause his relationship with Biden to sour too much; the same issue came between Trudeau and President Barack Obama and they seemed to get on marvelously. Trudeau will find in Biden a more like-minded partner on any manner of topics, including the environment. And he'll find Biden a more stable presence in Washington than his predecessor, who stalked away early from a G7 summit Trudeau hosted in the northern woods of Quebec declaring him "very dishonest and weak."

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