In fact, Biden’s trade team can do something far better: open up a much-needed conversation on subsidies—and, save the World Trade Organization while they are at it.

In what may turn out to be an unexpected bright spot, Trump’s trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, left his successor at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with an opening for a badly needed conversation about subsidies. When China joined the WTO in 2001, members did not change the provisions about subsidies. The Washington consensus was that bringing China into the global trading system would encourage a more market-oriented economy. And most people (except notably Robert Lighthizer) thought existing antidumping and countervailing duty rules and safeguards would be sufficient.

But beyond raising prices for importers, those trade regulations have done little to change China’s behavior. Under President Xi, state control over China’s economy increased, and the number of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs)—one particularly egregious form of subsidization—is roughly the same as it was when China joined the WTO. Out of the 109 Chinese corporations listed on the Fortune Global 500, only 15 percent are privately owned.

SOEs tend to be bulky and poor performers, and they are a problem worldwide. A recent report by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documents the rise of state-owned banks (SOBs) in economies of the former Soviet Union. Not only are SOBs poor performers, but they are also dangerously political, which further inhibits resources from finding their best use.

State-owned enterprises can bleed into the global economy with large distortive effects. Caroline Freund and Dario Sidhu did a deep dive on industrial competition in this regard. They note that the four largest construction firms in the world are Chinese SOEs. Engineering and construction have large spillover effects to trade.

Countries have made well-intentioned efforts to address these subsidies, but with little progress. Take steel. In 1978, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development formed the OECD Steel Committee. This group has been meeting for over 40 years to discuss developments in the industry. Their usual topic for the past two decades has been excess capacity, or when supply outstrips demand, which is something that tends to happen with subsidies. It turns out it is hard to find a solution that creates the right incentives. Without new WTO rules, this is probably insoluble.

Subsidization and SOEs breed more subsidization. The market reaction to subsidies is to buy, buy, buy from the subsidizers. In absence of any reaction by governments, this would probably continue until the subsidizers got tired of wasting their money. But producers in importing countries don’t like competing with cheap imports, and when they are well-organized, they often win the sympathy of their governments. After all, it’s hard to argue with “we will compete with anyone, but we can’t outcompete the Chinese Communist Party.”

To reform, first you must measure. Thanks to Global Trade Alert (GTA), policymakers will soon have much better data and information on subsidies across countries and by sector. Global Trade Alert is a non-governmental organization that tracks trade restrictions better than anyone, and Director Simon Evenett recent told me that he and his team are working “full steam ahead” to deliver a major report on the issue, prior to the G20 Leaders’ Summit later this year.

China may be one of the worst offenders, but they are in good company. If we are going to talk about subsidies, then we all—Europe, United States, Japan, and others—need to look in the mirror and clean house. Industries around the globe, whether it is oil, gas, coal, rice, ethanol, agriculture, pulp and paper, and chemicals, among many others, are on the take.

Most governments have been propping up more firms than they usually would thanks to COVID. But once the pandemic subsides, WTO members should come to the table with an open mind and be willing to write a new subsidies chapter. We may not be able to save the WTO without it.

Trump-Lighthizer unilateralism was unsavory but did serve the unintended purpose of tearing the roof off the subsidy issue. For everyone. Biden’s trade team, with his pick of Katherine Tai for U.S. Trade Representative, will have a great opportunity to move this forward. Not all sectors will like it, but the U.S. economy, the world economy, and the world trading regime need it.

To view the original blog post by Forbes, please click here. 

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On day one, President Biden and the Congress will confront a range of difficult transnational challenges. A few, like ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya, are security issues that must first be addressed by the Department of Defense. But the wider range of issues—COVID-19, global economic contraction, climate change, retrenchment in democracy, historic levels of refugees and migration, humanitarian crises, social and economic inequities, terrorism—can be addressed only by the two D’s of diplomacy and development—with a heavy responsibility on the latter. I presented many of these ideas in a recent paper.

‘Givens’

The question is what should the American people expect from the new president on development in addressing these challenges—and opportunities? We can be fairly certain from his track record and stated commitments that President Biden will seek to renew trust in American international engagement and leadership through a series of initial actions. They include:

• Support for robust funding for the International Affairs Budget.
• A commitment to working as a collaborative partner and supporter of international organizations and alliances such as rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization (WHO), supporting the consensus candidate for Secretary-General and appointment of judges to the dispute panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO), engaging in multilateral/multiparty efforts to address regional and global problems, and seeking consensus with our allies.
• Nominate a Secretary of State and leaders for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) who bring relevant experience, expertise, and commitment to the strategic and effective use of U.S. development, cooperation, and respect for the dedicated and talented career staff responsible for advancing U.S. development and diplomatic interests in the world.
• A concern for social and economic equity, with an immediate reversal of the Mexico City policy, the recent suspension of trainings on equity and diversity, and the regressive draft USAID policy on gender.
• Design and implementation of strategic initiatives, including:
  • An interagency plan led by USAID for addressing the global health pandemic that encompasses U.S. and multilateral approaches to stemming the tide of COVID-19, including through participation in the ACT-Accelerator to accelerated development and delivery of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics, and prepares developing countries to contain the next pandemic.
  • Incorporation of climate change actions into U.S. development cooperation policies and programs.
  • Alignment of U.S. development policy objectives and assessment of impact with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
  • A multinational/multiparty digital initiative (akin to Power Africa)—made even more urgent by COVID-19 demonstrating the centrality of digital technology to health, education, and employment—that leapfrogs the benefits of the digital world to developing countries, including digital literacy and efficient/cost-effective infrastructure and 5G, while providing protection against nefarious use of information technology.
• Listen to the views and recommendations of senior political and career appointments, and other stakeholders and allies, treating them with respect and providing clear, consistent policies; and replacing at international/multilateral organizations U.S. appointees who are not reflective of the values of international partnering and equity.
• Establish a collaborative, locally-driven approach to dealing with fragility and building resilience through effective implementation of the Global Development Act.
• Fully staff USAID to its funded level.

’Incremental’

So, if these are some of the starting points that are “givens,” what are “incremental” steps the Biden presidency could take quickly to elevate development with the stature and authority needed to fully address global development issues? They are:

• Assign the Administrator of USAID cabinet rank (as some presidents have done for the U.N. Ambassador and the trade representative).
• Make USAID a permanent member of the National Security Council (NSC) so the development perspective has a voice in the range of issues that touch on development—for example, development isn’t usually a prime consideration when authorizing military action, but it should be as it is development practitioners and diplomats who bear responsibility for the aftermath.
• Assign USAID full authority for the budgets it manages—made real by gaining congressional consent for the merger of policy and budget into the proposed new Bureau of Policy, Resources and Performance with a Senate-confirmed leader—and reign in the mission creep of F (the State Department Office of Foreign Assistance) for its unproductive interference in USAID program implementation.
• Direct an assessment of the level of staffing that USAID should reach to be able to appropriately manage its budgets and policy responsibilities (including in interagency councils) and (like the military) maintain a 10 percent float for professional career development.
• Issue a global development policy to bring coherence across the interagency to policies and programs of development cooperation, foreign assistance, and international economic policy, constructed through interagency deliberations led by USAID and the NSC in consultation with the Congress and the broader development and foreign policy communities.
• Engage with international initiatives to address the burgeoning debt crisis of developing countries, including through providing greater liquidity through emergency issuance of SDRs.
• Empower the leadership of the DFC to fully implement the development mandate of the BUILD Act, including: placing priority on supporting investments in low-income and fragile environments and on assessing and reporting on the development impact of projects; reducing the budget impact of equity finance by bringing it under the purview of credit reform; and, catalyzing collaboration among the DFC, USAID, and other agencies.

‘Visionary’

Beyond the “given” and the “incremental,” what about the “visionary and ambitious”? What if averting future pandemics, the existential threat of climate change, the growing social and economic equities within and between countries, rising authoritarianism, the destabilizing effect of Chinese challenge to U.S. global leadership and established international norms are understood by the new President, his key advisers, and congressional leaders as creating a moment in time that demands more than just incremental improvement? What if this is viewed as another 9/11 moment, or a post-World War II opportunity, and development is acknowledged as central to re-envisioning U.S. global engagement?

The first step would be to bring together the key actors—the President’s national security team with leaders from the two foreign affairs authorizing and appropriations committees—to determine if there is sufficient consensus that the urgency of global challenges to U.S. interests demands more than business as usual, that elevating development is central to answering the challenges, and that they are prepared to collaborate on redesigning and upgrading U.S. tools of development. Among the options that should be on the table are:

• Strategy. Modeled on the Defense Department quadrennial security strategy, undertake separate diplomacy and development strategic reviews that, along with the defense review, would roll up into a U.S. Global Strategy, which Congress should mandate be undertaken every four years.
• Department of Global Development. As President Kennedy did with the creation of USAID in 1961, bring coherence to U.S. development cooperation policies and programs through consolidation of development activities (bilateral and multilateral) in a cabinet-level department, in a manner that (1) incorporates into our development endeavors the diplomatic and regional knowledge of the Department of State, the technical expertise of domestic agencies, and the broad community of private stakeholders and (2) maintains the brands and principal operating modalities of certain agencies and programs, such as the MCC and DFC.
• Global Development Act. Replace the 60-year-old Foreign Assistance Act of 1961—with its hundreds of pages of amendments and overlapping/ inconsistent/constraining barnacles—with a less cumbersome, updated statute that provides strategic coherence, nimbleness of action, and clear accountability.
• Personnel. Design a personnel system for development that fits agency needs and the personnel dynamics of the 21st century.
• Multilateralism fit for the 21st century. Use the U.S. position in multilateral/regional development institutions and vertical funds to address 21st century challenges—climate change, health and education, mass migration, growing debt problem, and state and community fragility and resilience.
• Marshall Plan on Sustainable Development. Initiate an international Marshall Plan that joins American domestic and international efforts in a multiparty global endeavor to advance sustainable development that ramps up investment along its interconnected elements—green infrastructure, health, education, conservation of land and water, and justice and equity.

President Biden and his team face the options of incremental improvement or ambitious innovation—each approach has its own benefits and deficiencies—but, the more ambitious better fits with U.S. history of responding to moments of international crisis and will better  serve U.S. global leadership for decades rather than several years.

To read the original blog post, please click here.

George Ingram is a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development, housed in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings.

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From steel and aluminum tariffs to grain subsidies to boosting exports of liquefied natural gas, very few corners of the global commodities market eluded Donald Trump’s attention. There was at least one memo, executive order, pronouncement or tweet bringing some sort of attention to uranium, soybeans, and rare earths, the kinds of materials that haven’t received attention from American presidents in years.

Now, with Joe Biden winning the election, how will the next U.S. president diverge from his predecessor, and where he might keep the status quo?

Steel and Aluminum

The biggest issues in steel and aluminum are very similar, given these two industries — especially steel — were a top priority for the Trump administration. Tariffs aren’t expected to go away any time soon under Biden, and market participants have adjusted for the 25% duty on steel imports and the 10% levy on aluminum.

Removing them would be like catching a falling knife: It would alienate voters across the Midwest who helped Biden across the finish line. It would also lead U.S. Steel Corp. and Century Aluminum Co., among others, and the United Steelworkers union to lobby for some sort of new trade action to protect their industries.

Biden is more likely to maintain the tariffs and work with key allies — including the European Union, Japan and Canada — to form a bloc opposing the subsidies China gives to its industries, which produce more than half of the world’s steel and aluminum. The Trump administration openly shunned multilateral trade partnerships, so this would be a big change in policy. It’s still unclear, though, what policies Biden would enact to further protect the industries, both of whom claim need more help.

LNG

Trump administration officials criss-crossed Europe and Asia in 2019 touting U.S. LNG exports as “freedom gas” and “molecules of U.S. freedom,” but trade wars hurt sales as did environmental concerns over flaring in the Permian Basin and other emissions associated with production and shipment.

Biden didn’t state a position about LNG on his campaign website but boasts a plan to reduce methane emissions and flaring, which European buyers would welcome. Biden was vice president when the Obama administration approved permits for all six of the current LNG export terminals.

Political observers believe that Biden would bring the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement, an environmental treaty between nearly 200 nations to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. With buyers across the globe seeking greener or carbon-neutral LNG cargoes, the move might benefit U.S. exporters.

“Our biggest concern is American LNG exports to Asia and to Europe, and how those have declined as a consequence of some of these trade wars,” said Mike Sommers, the president of the American Petroleum Institute. As a previous longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden “has a firm understanding of how important American energy independence is from a foreign policy perspective as well,” he said.

Oil

Energy will likely be on the table in U.S. trade talks with China.

“As long as U.S. energy production such as shale oil, LPG and natural gas exceeds domestic demand, America would be an exporter,” said Sandy Fielden, director of research for Morningstar Inc. “So China, as the world’s largest consumer, will use energy as a bargaining chip. A Biden administration would implement a measured trade policy without the Trump tit-for-tat noise.”

“With a Biden victory, what you’re going to expect is a lot less trade uncertainty, and that is great for oil prices,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at Oanda Corp. “We see the best demand when globalization is trending.”

Despite ratcheting up sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, Trump wasn’t able to dislodge Nicolas Maduro. Analysts say that a Biden victory won’t necessarily reverse all the measures taken against Maduro.

Biden will seek to re-enter the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and lift sanctions on the country, according to RBC Capital Markets’ Helima Croft. “We continue to anticipate Iran being able to return around 1 million barrels a day of exports back to the market by the second half of 2021,” Croft said in a note.

Dairy

U.S. officials have pushed for stricter Canadian enforcement of the terms of dairy trade outlined in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, an area that could see fresh attention after the election. Only a small portion of U.S. cheese, dry milk and other dairy products crosses the border to Canadian markets. Still, many American dairies and processors have insisted that primarily their lower-value ingredients like powders are imported by Canada, while higher-value finished products like fine cheeses are largely barred. The U.S. and other large dairy producers around the globe have also criticized Canada’s below-market-priced exports as unfair competition.

A Biden presidency may slow some progress the industry is pushing for as guidelines around trade between the U.S. and Canada cement through the end of the year. While dairy policy tends to capture bipartisan support, some market watchers are concerned that Biden’s team may not share the Trump administration’s skepticism of Canada’s dairy trade and pricing systems, potentially delaying or tempering efforts to change them.

Grains

A Biden presidency could lead to warmer trade relations with China, supporting the rally in corn, wheat and soybeans, which hit a four-year high. He may roll back tariffs on Chinese goods, paving the way for more U.S. exports of agricultural products to Asia.

Exports to China have surged, but that’s largely due to market forces that made America the best source of corn and soybeans. Many earlier this year speculated that China would wait until the election to question the phase-one trade deal or trigger a clause that allows the Asian nation not to fulfill its pledges due to the pandemic.

Even with the surge in the second half of the year, shipments of agricultural and related products through September were about 38% of the deal target. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said last month that 71% of the target has been reached.

China is rebuilding its hog herd more quickly than expected after being hit by African swine fever, a deadly virus that kills most infected pigs within 10 days. The Asian nation has already purchased a record amount of American corn, and sales of soybeans are running at their highest level in data going back to 1991. U.S. pork exports are at a record and sorghum and beef sales also gained a boost.

“China is implementing and purchasing under the phase one agreement,” Dave MacLennan, Cargill Inc.’s chief executive officer, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. But “most of the activity we believe is driven by pure economics, demand driven,” he said.

— With assistance by Justina Vasquez, Stephen Cunningham, Sergio Chapa, Andres Guerra Luz, Sheela Tobben, Lucia Kassai, Michael Jeffers, and Isis Almeida

Joe Deaux is a commodity and metal reporter for Bloomberg. 

To read the original blog, click here. 

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5G wireless

First, the good news on 5G. The US is holding its own in the international 5G standards-setting process and is achieving some success in persuading allied governments to shun Huawei equipment in their 5G rollouts. But no matter who wins the election, the US needs a more comprehensive and centralized approach to dealing with the complex issues raised by the 5G future. As I’ve written previously, there are too many government actors in the 5G space, resulting in needless duplication and bureaucratic infighting. Take for example the still-unresolved issues relating to mid-band spectrum for 5G, with the Department of Defense (DOD) recently exploring the idea of building its own 5G network. This clearly conflicts with long-standing Federal Communications Commission moves to enhance private-sector broadband network development. There has been strong opposition from much of the private sector to DOD’s intervention, but Dish has agreed to join the effort if it goes forward.

A second example of the current confusion and lack of direction involves the absence of a policy to aid other nations in accessing alternatives to Huawei’s 5G equipment. After a long silence, the Donald Trump administration recently announced that it would provide loans to developing countries for alternative contracts with Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. But the details are sketchy, and, oddly, the US Agency for International Development — an agency with no experience in technology, particularly with regard to 5G — will administer the program.

The bottom line is that the US needs a strong hand at the top to coordinate 5G development with the private sector. A bill sponsored by Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) would provide a more solid basis for government aid. It would create a $500 million fund administered by the Treasury and State Departments to provide short-term international 5G aid and, for the longer term, would establish a $750 million fund to sponsor crucial R&D projects, including the development of network virtualization.

Huawei, Chinese tech companies, and export controls

The US has increasingly used export controls and the Commerce Department’s so-called “entity list” to ban exports of crucial equipment — particularly semiconductor chips — to Huawei and other Chinese tech companies. In August, the Trump administration added restrictions on 38 more Huawei affiliates around the world, bringing the total number to 121, to whom suppliers using US-designed software cannot export. In explaining the US action, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited national security threats and the “integrity of the world’s networks.” But, as the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) complained, the reach of the recent rules goes well beyond national security — including, for instance, restrictions that will cripple Huawei’s smartphone production and export. SIA argues that “these broad restrictions on commercial chip sales will bring significant disruption to the US semiconductor industry.”

For the purposes of this blog post, there are two questions that will need to be settled by the next administration. First, how far will the US go beyond purely national security rationales and into the realm of competitive industrial policy in dealing with Chinese technology companies? Second, how far will it push secondary restrictions on companies of US allies which might be caught in the widening export control and entity list net?

Encryption

The encryption issue hasn’t gone away since the Obama administration, when then-FBI Director James Comey campaigned for law enforcement officials to be granted access to encrypted iPhones. Comey largely appealed to Silicon Valley to find an imaginative solution, but under the Trump administration, Attorney General William Barr and current FBI Director Christopher Wray have adopted a more hard-line approach. Barr in particular has assailed Apple and Silicon Valley firms for being unpatriotic and, in the case of Apple, for abetting terrorists and child sex offenders.

He has pushed for a legislative solution to force decryption of smartphones and other tech products. If President Trump wins reelection and Barr remains, the pressure for “backdoors” for law enforcement will remain, despite the fact that the technological imperatives remain: A backdoor for one means backdoors for all. The position of a Biden administration is unclear —and at this point no doubt not thought out.

There are certainly more “hangovers” in tech policy for the next president, but this should get the debate rolling. 

Claude Barfield, a former consultant to the office of the US Trade Representative, researches international trade policy (including trade policy in China and East Asia), the World Trade Organization (WTO), intellectual property, and science and technology policy. 

To read the full article, click here. 

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It’s no secret that European officials are more in tune with Biden’s stated intent to improve transatlantic relations. But no matter who wins, fundamental disputes that erupted — or in some cases, merely worsened — under Trump may not be quick or easy to resolve.

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This is not just political opportunism, but reflects the President’s deep convictions and those of his advisors. Trump’s re-election would almost certainly reinforce the trends he established. Trump’s challenger Joe Biden is well ahead in the polls but is not certain to prevail even if Trump’s campaign is now hobbled by his COVID-19 infection. All of America’s trading partners face the question of what the change in American leadership, if it occurs, would bring.

The history of the Obama-Biden administration, and Biden’s long Senate track record of supporting major trade legislation, including NAFTA, the Uruguay Round and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, might suggest a return to a more traditional approach in trade policy, but that expectation – if taken literally – is unrealistic. Trade policy does not exist in a vacuum, and much has changed inside and outside the United States in the last four years. We would point to three major shifts a Biden Presidency would have to confront, and which have important implications for the US relationship with the EU:

• Across the US political spectrum, China is seen as a formidable geopolitical and technological adversary. This is not new, but under Trump, relations with China have deteriorated to a cold-war level.
• The sharp secular rise in income inequality within the United States and the intensification of identity politics, driven by race, religion and socio-economic background, have resulted in unprecedented polarisation of US politics. Trump has added fuel to this previously smouldering fire.
• The economic devastation caused by COVID-19 which, among other consequences, has made the inequality and racial divisions far worse.

As might be expected, each of these issues figures prominently in Biden’s campaign manifesto. From the perspective of the European Union and its trade relationship with the United States, the three shifts mean that a Biden presidency would:

• Prioritise above all else the fixing of domestic problems, rather than trade relations (at least initially), perhaps lasting until the mid-term elections in November 2022. This would echo Obama/Biden’s first term, during which dealing with the fall-out from the Great Recession was the top priority. Taking a lesson from the 1930s, Obama/Biden resisted a relapse into protectionism, but they also placed new trade deals on the back-burner initially.
• Continue to support ‘Buy American’ policies (a relatively mild manifestation of protectionism which is widely practiced in various forms worldwide) and be less inclined to negotiate new trade agreements. When negotiating them, a Biden Administration will insist on rigorous safeguards, most importantly on those that ‘protect’ US workers.
• View trade relations through a prism of geopolitical and technological rivalry with China rather than – as was evident during the Cold War – the security umbrella of the North-Atlantic Alliance, which placed Europe higher on the list of priorities.

Comparing scenarios under a Trump or Biden victory, it is useful to consider the US-EU trade relationship in terms of, first the bilateral relationship; second, the US and EU relationships with China and third, multilateral cooperation – specifically, what to do about the crisis affecting the World Trade Organisation.

The bilateral relationship

Under a second Trump term, the present sceptical, even hostile, policy towards the EU is likely to intensify. Though Trump has essentially failed to achieve his stated goals in trade (the trade deficit remains, manufacturing jobs have continued to decline and China’s stance on structural reforms has hardly budged), our assumption is that during a second term, free from electoral concerns, he will double down on his approach. Present areas of trade tension, which include aluminium and steel tariffs, data privacy, digital taxes and the secular dispute over Airbus and Boeing subsidies, could escalate into a full-blown trade war that would include tariffs on European cars and a direct challenge to the Common Agricultural Policy.

There is little doubt that a Biden Presidency would mark a toning down of EU-US tensions and a return to civility. Attitudes across the Atlantic will converge again in important areas such as climate change. Surprisingly, voters who identify as Democrats are far more likely than Republican voters to support open trade, even though that is not the case in the US Congress. Although Biden appeals to many in the rust belt and has supported steel tariffs in the past, the present tariffs on steel and aluminium, based on Section 232 (national security), are hardly compatible with rebuilding alliances. A way will be found to eliminate them or replace them with other mechanisms. The threat of auto tariffs, which are widely opposed anyway, is certain to fade. Biden, of Irish ancestry, has said that a trade deal with the UK should be conditional on preserving peace on the island of Ireland in line with the Good Friday Agreement. This is generally seen as requiring a continued open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, in keeping with the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU.

However, any return to negotiations on a comprehensive deal, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is highly unlikely. But, late in the Biden term, and as the healing from the COVID-19 crisis occurs, there will be opportunities for partial single or multiple issue-based deals. Assuming the differing positions of EU countries can be reconciled, win-win areas could include negotiations on services, medical goods and environmental products. Divisions over digital taxes and data privacy may be narrowed. Importantly, Biden’s deeply held concern about climate change offers an opening for negotiations which include trade, such as coordinating a position on the thorny issue of carbon border adjustments.

However, in those negotiations, the United States is likely to be even more demanding and less flexible than, say, under Obama or George W. Bush on account of the domestic and international changes we have outlined, Bodog Poker especially the mounting rivalry with China which will persist as the main point of reference in geopolitics.

China

Both Biden and Trump have seen it as in their electoral interest to stir up the growing China phobia of the US body politic. It is not clear, however, whether that necessarily points to an escalation of the China-US trade war post-election. Trump often boasts of his success (doubtful in our view) in the Phase 1 trade deal with China, and of his intention to strike a more comprehensive and better Phase 2 deal if re-elected. His passion for the “deal of the century”, the masterstroke that resolves the toughest problem, may well motivate him to work hard towards putting the relationship with China onto a more productive basis. However, Trump’s next deal with China, if it materialises, is sure to continue his managed trade, America First approach, further undermining the multilateral trading system and creating new concerns about discrimination against European firms.

There is little doubt that, while also being hard on China, Biden will be eager to return to something resembling normal trade relations, albeit in a progressive and negotiated fashion. Voters who identify as Democrats are less likely than Republicans to be hostile to China. Normalisation would entail eventually removing punitive tariffs on 65% of US imports from China (or close to $400 billion of Chinese goods), in exchange for China doing the same on about 57% of their imports from the US and some acceleration of China’s structural reforms. Biden may well decide that the United States should rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (now the CPTPP, consisting of Japan and ten other Pacific nations). The original intent of the TPP, which was negotiated during the Obama-Biden second term, was to ‘contain’ China and, while the TPP included some novel features such as disciplines on state-owned enterprises and e-commerce, the agreement actually required little new trade liberalisation in the United States, and was estimated to have no impact on US employment. These factors would make it easier for Biden to rejoin.

Unlike Trump’s essentially adversarial approach towards Europe, working together with allies to pressure China on reforms will be central to Biden’s Presidency and would represent an opportunity for the EU. On matters relating to human rights abuses and Chinese tech companies building communication networks, most Americans support a tough line, irrespective of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

The EU’s challenge will therefore be to reconcile its fundamental interest in a vibrant trade and investment relationship with both superpowers with American demands motivated by US geopolitical and security concerns. That challenge, complicated by the different stances that EU countries take towards China, will remain no matter who is elected in the US.

The WTO

The crisis in the WTO long precedes Trump and is unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future whoever is elected US president. Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer have been eager to throw away the WTO rule book (whatever Lighthizer might say to the contrary), attempting to neuter the organisation and its dispute settlement arm. In a second Trump term, the United States will probably reinforce its challenge to the WTO by demanding unilateral tariff concessions from other members, including the EU. Such a demand is sure to be rejected, paving the political path towards US tariff increases across the board.

Biden, by contrast, is likely to revert to a more traditional negotiating stance, to strengthen the rules-based system and preserve the WTO acquis, and – where possible and without setting high expectations – to make progress on reforming it. Specifically, under Biden, the US will likely make concrete recommendations to reform the working of the Appellate Body and, in exchange, allow renewal of its judges. The US is also likely to resume a push for plurilateral deals which, if critical mass is achieved, may be extended on a most-favoured nation basis to all WTO members, even those that do not undertake commitments under the deal. Biden’s inclination to work within the WTO (a stance that enjoys bipartisan support in the Congress) may enable collaboration with both the EU and China.

In conclusion, under Biden the EU’s dilemma in managing its trade relationships with two adversarial geopolitical players will remain. The tendency to decouple from China on technology may persist, at least until major advances in structural reforms in China become evident – which appear unlikely in the foreseeable future. A Biden presidency would also entail a less adversarial approach towards the EU. However, negotiation space and political attention in the US is unlikely to be available for a move towards a comprehensive trade negotiation such as a revamped TTIP, even if the EU were ready for that (which is doubtful).

As the United States adopts a potentially more cooperative and constructive stance on many of the difficult issues that mar trade relations with Europe, from sanitary standards to subsidies, data privacy, carbon border adjustments and taxes on e-commerce,  developing a common EU position will be a top priority. Failure on the EU’s part to rise to that challenge is bound to relegate trade relations with Europe even lower in the Biden Administration’s priorities.

We thank without implicating them Maria Demertzis, André Sapir, William Reinsch and Susan Schwab for useful comments. Marta Dominguez provided research assistance.

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Uri Dadush is a non-resident scholar at Bruegel, based in Washington, DC and a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South in Rabat, Morocco. He is also Principal of Economic Policy International, LLC, providing consulting services to international organizations as well as corporations. He teaches international trade policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a course on globalization and development in the executive education program of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) and the Mohammed VI Polytechnic. He is a co-chair of the Trade, Investment and Globalization Task-Force of the T20. He was Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Trade and Investment at the World Economic Forum. His books include “WTO Accessions and Trade Multilateralism” (with Chiedu Osakwe, co-editor), “Juggernaut: How Emerging Markets Are Transforming Globalization” (with William Shaw), “Inequality in America” (with Kemal Dervis and others), “Currency Wars” (with Vera Eidelman, co-editor) and “Paradigm Lost: The Euro in Crisis”.

Guntram B. Wolff is the Director of Bruegel. His research focuses on the European economy and governance, on fiscal and monetary policy and global finance. He regularly testifies at the European Finance Ministers’ ECOFIN meeting, the European Parliament, the German Parliament (Bundestag) and the French Parliament (Assemblée Nationale). From 2012-16, he was a member of the French prime minister’s Conseil d’Analyse Economique.

Dadush, U. and G. Wolff (2020) ‘What should Europe expect from American trade policy after the election?’ Bruegel Blog, 8 October

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