“When you wanted to do something with Europe, you made the first or maybe second call to London,” said Charles Kupchan, who served as a senior official on the National Security Council for European affairs in the Obama and Clinton governments. In 2021, “you are still going to call London, but that call will be further down the line. Britain no longer has a seat at the table, ”he said, thanks to Brexit.
Other Democrats speak in melancholy terms about a relationship that Winston Churchill once described as “brotherly”. “London will still be a player” and “we will always look to the UK as an ally”, are common refrains. But it is the energy corridors in Brussels, Paris and Berlin, and not No. 10 Downing St. and Whitehall, that are increasingly drawing Washington’s attention.
While Democrats welcome Britain recent $ 22 billion increase in defense spending, and plan for close climate cooperation, “Biden is looking to strengthen and renew ties with the EU, and Britain is not going to be part of that,” said one person familiar with Biden’s thinking.
President Donald Trump has had a sometimes difficult relationship with Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May, but his distrust of the EU and NATO has meant that London has always been the White House’s preferred partner in Europe. In Johnson, a Brexit champion, Trump saw a soul mate. London’s expected dividend: a 2021 trade agreement.
The Biden government does not plan to play the game. “Boris Johnson needs a trade deal to show the domestic usefulness of Brexit,” said the person familiar with the president-elect’s thinking.
The Biden team is promising only to review any chapters of trade deals agreed with the Trump administration to ensure that they are “in line with Biden’s priorities,” said the person, “taking into account domestic factors.”
“The first task is to try to put our house in order at home,” said James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence. Based on his interactions with Biden’s transition team, Clapper said, helping post-Brexit in Britain “doesn’t seem to be really at the top of his list of priorities right now”
No trade agreement before 2022
It is not difficult to see why: The large number of domestic challenges that will occupy Biden during its first 100 days will overshadow British efforts to secure an accelerated trade agreement in the same period.
“I would say that the best scenario for a deal is 2022,” said Lewis Lukens, who served as US deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom under Presidents Trump and Obama.
Kupchan agrees that London will have to wait until the second year in office for Biden’s team, given the lack of a clear Democratic majority in the Senate and a narrow margin in the House. “There is an important conversation to be had about broader economic issues, but not about bilateral trade,” he said.
Politically, it would be “a big blow” for the UK if a trade deal could not be closed quickly, said a former British diplomat. But in economic terms, it would hardly be noticed. The UK and the U.S. were each other’s biggest investors in 2018, but the proposed deal would add only about $ 10 billion to the combined $ 23 trillion of U.S. and UK GDP.
Some leading politicians in the British conservative party in government think the deal is a transatlantic distraction. Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told POLITICO that he thinks the UK should focus on getting the UK and the US to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade bloc of 11 countries, including Japan, Canada and Australia, designed in part to contain China’s growing economic influence.
The Obama administration helped negotiate an initial version of that agreement before President Trump withdrew from it. “We must work with the US on global regulatory reform, carbon pricing and defend the rule-based system against China,” added Tugendhat, echoing what Biden’s transition team told POLITICO.
With the UK serving as chairman of the G-7 and hosting the UN’s annual climate conference in 2021, Democrats are eager to prioritize issues like Covid-19, climate and global economic recovery, before a trade deal.
The UK government is not ready to talk about “Plan B” for the business, but a spokesman acknowledged the challenge ahead: “securing a comprehensive agreement that matches the depth of the UK-US trade relationship. it is more important than meeting any specific deadline, “said the spokesman.
The timetable for a 2021 trade deal is really daunting. The USTR must notify Congress of a pending agreement before April 1 for it to be signed before Congress’s fast track authority expires on July 1. To complicate matters further, the last formal negotiations between the United States and the United Kingdom ended on October 30, which means that progress is limited to technical discussions during the transition. Meanwhile, USTR political officials have blocked meetings throughout December between Biden’s transition team and career officials, potentially impairing Biden’s ability to start work immediately after his inauguration.
To agree with Biden’s team, Britain is positioning a trade deal as a tool for economic recovery. “This agreement would support both of our economies to rebuild better from Covid-19,” said a UK government spokesman, who described the negotiations as “at an advanced stage, with a significant proportion of the agreed legal text” .
Several chapters of the business draft are nearing completion, according to negotiation documents seen by POLITICO, including texts on small and medium-sized companies, investments and digital services. But significant differences remain, including pharmaceutical, textile and intellectual property regulations.
Johnson’s historical miscalculation
In the opinion of many Democrats, Johnson bet too much on Trump. “O [U.K.] government continued to believe that Trump would do favors for them and that did not work. The trade deal was going to happen in a matter of weeks, then months, and now four years have passed and that has not happened, ”said a former American diplomat.
It was only after the US Trade Representative published his trade agreement wish list in 2018, that Johnson realized there would be no favors from Republicans. Having piled his office with relatively inexperienced Brexit supporters, with march orders to deliver Brexit above all else, Johnson’s team “does not have the relationships it may need with a new Democratic government,” said the former diplomat.
The UK government insists it is an unfair reading of the situation. “From the beginning, we engaged with US partners on a bipartisan basis – at the federal and state levels,” said a government spokesman. British diplomats also say they have long-standing ties to Biden’s Katherine Tai choice for USTR.
That has counted for little in the transition so far: Biden’s team is “hyper-disciplined” about not getting involved with foreign officials before taking office, according to British and Democratic officials with whom POLITICO spoke.
Johnson and his allies may, instead, rely on President-elect Biden’s trademark ability not to hold grudges.
So far, British authorities are breathing a sigh of relief because Biden’s team is not publicly buying the sharp and public criticism former Obama administration officials did about Johnson.
But in particular, Democrats continue to take offense at Johnson’s often inflammatory rhetoric, including a racially charged description of President Barack Obama as of America “Partly Kenyan President” in 2016, raising the issue in discussions with a number of British officials. Biden himself described Johnson at a 2019 fundraising event as “a physical and emotional clone” of Trump.
Still, those close to Biden insist that “it is not useful to personalize things too much,” according to a person familiar with his thinking. “You have perfect couples along the lines of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, or Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and then there are couples in which the personalities do not match, but make it work,” said the person, describing the likely Biden-Johnson relationship.
Although “there is not much heat,” admitted a former American ambassador, the duo’s differences “will be Franco-Navy, because the United States wants the United Kingdom to prosper.”
Paris preferred London
Although President-elect Biden and his team respect Britain’s choice to leave the EU, Democrats tend to see Brexit as a poorly executed policy.
Secretary of State appointed Antony Blinken called Brexit a “total mess, ”While Kupchan called it“ an act of self-isolation that will inevitably lessen Britain’s weight in the world ”.
They also regret that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU will make it more difficult to influence the heavyweight 27-member club. Britain’s open economy often acted as a counterweight to the protectionist instincts of France and Germany. “The US has lost its most effective member of the EU,” said a former American diplomat. “Now life for the United States is more complicated. We have to deal with more complicated coalitions. ”
Kupchan said that Brexit has only accelerated a trend since the end of the Cold War, for Washington to engage more directly with Paris and Berlin. Paris takes advantage because of its defense investments. “What will really irritate the UK is that now we will re-engage the EU as an essential partner, and it is fair to see France on the rise,” said a former American diplomat. “France is one that still aspires to be a global player and has more ambition,” said Ellen Laipson, director of George Mason University Security Policy Study Center.
Senior Democrats support Biden’s desire to prioritize better relations with the EU. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), A close ally of Biden, wants a trade deal with the EU to take priority over the deal with the UK. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Chairman of the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, also urged the next government to renew trade negotiations with the EU.
Biden will continue to monitor the UK’s negotiations with the EU, especially how the peace agreements in Northern Ireland are handled. “People are watching what’s going on, where it’s going to end,” said a person familiar with the president-elect’s thinking.
Although the Biden team welcomes the UK government’s commitment on December 8 to keep the Good Friday Agreement in full, this measure does not guarantee or speed up a bilateral trade agreement, which remains a “separate discussion ”Said the person.
In other words, Britain will have to win its trade deal.
“I think the ball is really in the UK’s side,” said Lukens, the former ambassador. “It remains to be seen whether Boris and his team are capable of developing a world view beyond Brexit.”
Nahal Toosi and Doug Palmer contributed reporting