UK's hopes of early US trade deal dashed by Biden
warning
President-elect says his priority is to invest in US
manufacturing and protect American workers
Joe Biden: ‘I’m not going to enter any new trade
agreement with anybody until we have made major investments here at home and in
our workers.’
Patrick
Wintour, Diplomatic editor
Wed 2 Dec
2020 10.33 GMT
Britain’s
hopes of securing an early trade deal with the US have been dashed by a warning
from Joe Biden, the president-elect, that America will not sign a trade deal with
anyone until the US has sorted out its competitiveness.
Britain had
been closing in on a trade deal with the administration of Donald Trump, a
fierce opponent of the European Union, but Biden has said in a New York Times
interview that his priority will be to improve investment in US manufacturing
and the protection of Amerian workers.
“I’m not
going to enter any new trade agreement with anybody until we have made major
investments here at home and in our workers and in education,” he said.
Some supporters
of Brexit had touted a US trade deal as one of the early benefits of leaving
the EU and its customs union, although the economic value of such a deal had
been questioned.
Biden told
the New York Times: “I want to make sure we’re going to fight like hell by
investing in America first.” He named energy, biotech, advanced materials and
artificial intelligence as areas ripe for large-scale government investment in
research.
The remarks
underline the extent to which leading Democrats have retreated from a wholesale
embrace of globalisation, and insist US foreign policy must give greater
priority to America’s domestic interests.
The UK
Foreign Office and trade departments still have a number of trade deals in the
offing, and may look for a trade deal with Asia-Pacific nations as a way of
filling the vacuum likely to be created by Biden’s priorities. The UK cannot
formally engage with the new administration until his inauguration in January,
but it has been making contacts with senior Democrat senators.
Biden also
suggested the best route to gaining leverage over trade with China lay in
building alliances to compete with it. Biden said his “goal would be to pursue
trade policies that actually produce progress on China’s abusive practices –
that’s stealing intellectual property, dumping products, illegal subsidies to
corporations” and forcing “tech transfers” from US companies to their Chinese
counterparts.
He said
thatleverage could be built by building a domestic consensus in favour of
domestic investment, including in US semiconductors.
He said he
would not be lifting any tariffs on China at the stage, but instead conducting
a review. “The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our
– or at least what used to be our – allies on the same page. It’s going to be a
major priority for me in the opening weeks of my presidency to try to get us
back on the same page with our allies.”
The EU has
already sent a note to the Biden team seeking a common strategy on China.
Biden also
for the first time since his election made clear that he was committed to
trying to bring the US and Iran back into compliance with the existing nuclear
deal signed in 2015 before trying to negotiate an update or expansion of the
deal. Donald Trump took the US out of the deal in 2018, imposing heavy economic
sanctions. Iran has responded by loosening its commitments under the deal on
stockpiles of enriched uranium, but has allowed UN inspections of its nuclear
sites to continue.
Some have
argued that Biden should not lift the crippling US sanctions until Iran has
committed to a wider deal that includes its missile programme, regional
behaviour and updates some of the commitments in the existing deal.
Biden said:
“Look, there’s a lot of talk about precision missiles and all range of other
things that are destabilising the region”. He added that the best way to
achieve stability in the region was to deal “with the nuclear programme”.
If Iran got
a nuclear bomb, he added, it put enormous pressure on the Saudis, Turkey, Egypt
and others to get nuclear weapons themselves. “And the last goddamn thing we
need in that part of the world is a buildup of nuclear capability,” he said.
Then, Biden
added, “in consultation with our allies and partners, we’re going to engage in
negotiations and follow-on agreements to tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear
constraints, as well as address the missile programme”. He added he would like
more than the existing signatories to the present deal – France, Germany, the
UK, Russia and China – to be signatories to any new deal, but for other
regional players Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to be onboard.
He said
that the US, once back in the deal, could call for the snapback of UN sanctions
if it deemed Iran was still not in compliance its terms, something he said Iran
knew.
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