How Biden let Europe slip away
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Biden administration hasn’t been good for the trans-Atlantic alliance. This might seem a surprising claim, given that Joe Biden’s team and Kamala Harris’s campaign have touted improved U.S.-European ties as their greatest foreign-policy achievement.
To be sure, the administration has devoted greater attention to Europe than any other region and shifted U.S. policy toward European Union preferences on a range of issues, from the Iran nuclear deal to the Paris climate accord. But after 3½ years, there is surprisingly little to show in tangible benefits for the U.S.
Take trade diplomacy. Mr. Biden’s team insisted it would chart a new course with the EU after tit-for-tat tariff exchanges under Donald Trump.
What we got instead was an incrementalist approach that has done little to address U.S. concerns about European protectionism while handing regulatory wins to Brussels and failing to create a unified front against Chinese mercantilism. The centerpiece of the administration’s approach was a new entity called the Trade and Technology Council.
A brainchild of the European Commission, its nominal purpose was to compartmentalize areas for agreement after years of failed attempts to create a comprehensive trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement. By its very existence, the Trade and Technology Council favored Brussels because it took the EU’s longstanding goal of regulatory convergence as a given and framed the agenda as a search for that convergence. From the earliest meetings, it was apparent this wouldn’t be a forum for achieving what is America’s, and should be Europe’s, top strategic aim in trade—to end Chinese dumping and foil Beijing’s efforts to dominate emerging technologies.
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