Last time, barely a month ago, it was a get-to-know-you visit. This time his fellow leaders will expect President George Bush to engage in the substance in both the formal sessions of the G8 summit in Genoa and in his various bilaterals, one-on-one meetings with other heads of government.
The message as he departed Washington was that he was sticking to his guns on global warming and missile defence and brings little of substance that could help relaunch a trade round.
"People will know where we stand," he told journalists in London on Wednesday. "And some will like it and some won't like it. But they will always know that I will be willing to listen, discuss and consult on issues of importance."
Discuss, yes. But seriously negotiate? Perhaps convincing his partners of that will be his greatest challenge.
It would probably be easier to describe the agenda for this weekend's G8 summit of the world's great economic powers, China excepted, by listing what is not going to be on the menu. Take your pick of the issues of our time and you will find it gets a mention.
Originally about economic coordination, G8 has become, in the absence of institutional alternatives, a chance for the world's most powerful leaders to touch base with each other on anything that is worrying them.
Although they will discuss the listless state of the world economy, there will be precious little coordination, and then it's on to AIDS, global poverty, oil prices, Russia, European security, the Balkans, the Middle East, the world trade round, the technology gap. Kyoto will even get a mention, although the serious work is being done in Bonn.
Don't expect any earth-shattering breakthrough either. Most of the summit will consist of reviews of work in hand, with conclusions, mostly anodyne, already prepared in draft form.
But there is a subtext to the debates which lifts the meetings somewhat out of the ordinary and may yet mark Genoa as the beginning of a new process of rapprochement between North and South, whose parlous relationship is now a major obstacle to key projects of the West, and particularly of the US.
"The President's overall objective for the Genoa summit," his National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, told journalists here, "is to advance a vision of partnership between the G8 and developing countries based on mutual responsibility that will help build a world that is more free, secure and prosperous."
The dialogue begins in Genoa with a dinner tonight involving the G8 leaders and those from Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Bangladesh and El Salvador.
Forging a new relationship is not only key to the central theme of the summit, poverty reduction, but to a number of other crucial international issues from sharing the burden on greenhouse gas emission cuts to debt forgiveness, to disarmament, to the fight against AIDS and the relaunch of a world trade round.
For President Bush that means persuading the Second and Third Worlds that salvation lies through free trade (a new trade round) and economic growth, but with the West, effectively as a quid pro quo, contributing to breaking down barriers of suspicion by funding social programmes like education and AIDS eradication. That, he says, is "compassionate conservatism" at a global level.
To that end, this week he called on the international lending institutions to provide 50 per cent of their aid to social development in the least developed countries in the form of grants rather than loans, although he was vague about where the cash would come from.
European leaders have not supported such ideas, believing that even a small return on loans encourages discipline in the receiving countries, but among the more farsighted there is a sense of the need to find a way to connect their agenda to that of the developing world.
The successful relaunch of a trade round in Qatar in November will depend on finding some way of co-opting the South on an issue on which it is deeply suspicious of US and EU motives. If this weekend makes any progress on devising a strategy on that front it will be deemed a real success.
But the most upbeat headlines to emerge from the summit are likely to be about the launch of the UN's global health fund to combat AIDS and other diseases, the personal cause of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and to which so far $1 billion has been contributed by states and businesses. The target is far higher - some $7 billion a year - but the US and others are promising more once it is up and running.
Mr Bush will also meet the Pope and Russia's President Putin, and neither of these meetings is likely to be friction-free. There is intense media speculation that the Pope will want to discuss the issue of stem-cell research which is dividing Mr Bush's administration.
And Mr Putin, fresh from his meeting with the Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, is unlikely to be in a mood for concessions on missile defence. His suggestion that Russia be allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will certainly not bridge the divide, although he has said Russia is willing to talk seriously about amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Mr Bush will be keen to demonstrate that his kindly assessment of the man when they met first last month, for which he has been severely criticised on the right, is more than wishful thinking.
Patrick Smyth is Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times