It is looking very likely that Biden will be the US President after 3rd November. What does this mean for the UK?
Biden and the democrats have a lot of Irish American supporters so any negotiations with the EU that have an impact on Ireland will attract interventions from Biden. Trade is not mentioned in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement so the rhetoric is all in terms of "undermining" the Belfast Agreement which means that the US will support the Irish and EU on trade. The UK can use this to our advantage because we know that within a decade or so Northern Ireland will secede under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. This allows the UK to give way on sovereignty over NI in return for trade concessions, knowing that the sovereignty would be lost shortly anyway. A Biden Presidency might embolden the EU in its demands for sovereignty over UK fishing grounds and so scupper an EU-UK Trade Deal but this would be to our advantage given the huge UK-EU deficits.
The UK would not benefit greatly from a free trade deal with the USA because it pays very low tariffs on its service sales to the US so Biden's team would be helping us if they blocked a UK-US trade deal that favoured US manufactures.
Biden is weak on China. According to the New York Times his view is that the United States “should put less focus on trying to slow China down and more emphasis on trying to run faster ourselves.” Prior to this election campaign Biden was generally in favour of overlooking internal politics in China so that trade would prosper.
Biden's team favours multilateral agreements and would likely pursue rejoining the "Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership".
Had he been like Bill Clinton we could have been relaxed about his election but Biden is not his own man. Biden is clearly a glove puppet for the US Corporate Elite. He is a long term member of the Council on Foreign Relations which is the centre of Western Big Business Power. The Council on Foreign Relations should not be confused with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that Biden chaired 2001-3.
This means that the US will gracefully give way to China because confrontation is bad for business in the short term. Expect agreements to allow Google and Facebook to operate in China and the Chinese model of social media to get a foothold in the West. Expect concessions on Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Overall a Biden win will probably be positive for the UK but expect heart rending cries from the UK Corporate media about lost Free Trade Agreements. It is a pity that the choice for the USA was Biden or Trump. Neither are equipped to confront the military, political and economic rise of China.
26/10/2020
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