- European diplomats and foreign policy experts say a Joe Biden presidency would restore America’s strained alliances with Europe.
- Donald Trump’s presidency has put relations between the US and its closest allies under serious stress.
- The president’s attacks on international institutions and his distaste for multilateral action have tested long-standing alliances.
- A senior UK diplomat told Business Insider that they believed a Biden presidency would end Trump-era “venal corruption”.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
The election of Joe Biden as President of the United States in November would restore relations between the United Kingdom and the United States, repair the diplomatic damage caused by the Trump administration and increase the prospects for a transatlantic trade agreement, according to European diplomats and trade experts. .
The transatlantic alliance between the US and its European allies has been under increasing tension since Trump’s election in 2016.
The president’s attacks on multilateral institutions such as NATO, his attacks on Europe’s rapprochement with Iran and his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement have tested the long “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and other European allies.
The damage has been reflected among the European public, with recent polls showing a collapse in America’s perceptions across the Atlantic.
However, there is growing optimism in European diplomatic circles that much of the damage could be repaired if the president lost in this year’s elections.
A senior UK diplomat, who asked not to be identified, told Business Insider that a Biden presidency would end Trump-era “venal corruption”.
“A lot of things will change if Biden wins,” said the diplomat.
“The venal corruption of the Trump family and the nasty narcissistic aspects of their behavior – all of that will go with a different kind of president,” they said.
“Instead of having a unilateralist US policy alone with a Biden, you would have to work with our allies to find solutions.”
The diplomat’s comments echo the events of Biden’s foreign policy adviser, Antony Blinken, who noted earlier this year that the United States under Biden would rebuild the United States’ ties to multilateral institutions.
“When Joe Biden looks at the world, one thing stands out,” he told London group of experts Chatham House, in comments reported by The Guardian. “If we don’t like it, the world tends not to organize, and for more than 75 years, the United States played the leading role in organizing the world, setting up institutions, writing the rules, and setting the rules.”
“If we are not doing that, then one of two things happens. Either someone else is, and probably not in a way that furthers our interests and values, or no one does, and that can be even worse. So you have a gap that it tends to be full of evil things rather than good things. Therefore, the United States has the responsibility and self-interest to lead with humility. “
The distancing between Washington and its allies has been felt especially in the United Kingdom, where relations with Washington have been severely tested by Britain’s decision to sign an agreement with the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei to develop its 5G network, a despite repeated opposition and threats from the Trumps. administration.
Officials in the United States were also angered in June by plans for Huawei to build a £ 400 million research and development center in Cambridge, England.
That does not mean that Biden takes a conciliatory approach to China. In fact, he has pointed out that he will take an equally harsh line in China as Trump, and has even criticized Donald Trump for being too soft on Beijing.
“Democrats are as tough on this issue as Republicans,” said Heather Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The tactics will be very different. I suppose a Biden administration will not instigate tariffs and a trade war against its allies.”
“They will try to convince them [instead] to reduce dependence on Chinese investment, particularly in telecommunications. But the message will remain the same. “
“That’s where I think the research and development center will be a major concern for a Biden administration as much as it would be for a Trump administration,” said Conley.
A UK diplomat told Business Insider: “[Issues] like taking a firm line with China, like Iran, those things will continue to be controversial. These [Biden and his allies] They are people who believe in alliances, in the difference between right and wrong, and in the moral position of the United States as the leader of the free world. But they accept that it has to be won. “
Biden’s hostile rhetoric towards China indicates that the state of relations between the United Kingdom and the United States could end up being governed by how Boris Johnson chooses to administer the United Kingdom’s relationship with Beijing.
The prime minister has not formally signaled that he will pull the UK out of the deal to allow Huawei to build part of the UK’s 5G network, but indicated this week that he was going to think “very carefully” about whether to proceed with the deal because he ” I didn’t want to see our critical national infrastructure at risk of being controlled in any way by potentially hostile state vendors. “
Conservative MPs and Downing Street are increasingly concerned about the UK’s dependence on China for investment and imports.
Those concerns have only grown due to the coronavirus pandemic, which highlighted the UK’s dependence on China.
A trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States will remain a challenge
Joe Biden and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron Getty
Conley also suggested that the UK decision could have been prompted in part by an assessment by the United Kingdom that the United States Congress would not approve a free trade agreement if Huawei’s decision were carried out.
“What I have seen in the past few weeks is a significant shift in the UK’s position, either in part due to the realities of a UK-US free trade agreement, and knowing that Congress will not approve an FTA unless the Huawei problem was addressed, or if there was now so much pressure coming from intelligence channels and others that the government made the decision that it had to abandon its position, “he said.
There is also a muted optimism among some trade experts that a Biden administration could bolster prospects for a UK-United States free trade agreement, in which progress has stalled in recent months.
While the impact of such a trade deal would be economically insignificant, boosting the economy by just 0.16% in 15 years, Downing Street believes it would represent a significant political victory and usher in a new era of post-Brexit world trade.
Currently, obstacles to a deal include demands by the United States that the United Kingdom withdraw its opposition to importing American agricultural products, as well as the United Kingdom’s plans to introduce a digital services tax, which could mean that America’s big tech companies face much higher taxes.
But Gary Hufbauer, a member of the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Business Insider that a Biden administration would be more willing to compromise on various hot spots in the negotiations.
“I think a Biden administration would be more willing to live and let live,” Hufbauer told Business Insider.
“Biden’s insistence on [food safety standards] it would not be as pushy as with the Trump administration. That would make things easier in an agreement with the UK, “he said.
Furthermore, he said, a Biden administration would also appear more likely to seek a compromise on the digital services tax, possibly in the form of an agreed international cap on the amount of revenue it could raise.
However, James Kane, a business associate in the UK Government Institute expert group, said a Biden administration is unlikely to reduce its current demands on agriculture.
“In trade policy, the United States is strongly driven by internal commercial interests, and this is particularly true in the case of agriculture,” he told Business Insider.
“The goal of the US will continue to be to bring agricultural products from the US to the UK. That will still mean removing tariffs and non-tariff barriers, such as a ban on hormone-treated meat and chlorinated chicken.”
“The United States tried to do that with the European Union under Obama, and I don’t see why they would do it differently under President Biden.”
“A large part of America’s trade policy is bipartisan. It has always been America First. Trump has been the first to put it in such stark terms.”
