Britain’s exit from the European Union and the legacy of the Trump administration mean that the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK is not what it was before.
But the Christmas Eve deal on post-Brexit relations between the UK and the EU removed an important potential source of friction between the Boris Johnson government and the next Biden government in Washington.
President-elect Joe Biden and a few other Democrats, including those with Irish-American blocs active in their districts, were angered by the possibility that a Brexit without an agreement would result in a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and Ireland and violated the Good Friday peace agreement, which the Clinton administration helped broker in 1998.
With an agreement that avoids the need for tariffs between the UK and Ireland, a member of the EU, that prospect has been avoided.
“I am happy to see that this agreement preserves the Good Friday Agreement, which has maintained decades of peace for the British and European peoples and ensures that there will be no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland,” said MP Richard Neal ( D., Mass.), Chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce and Tax Committee. “I look forward to continuing the US engagement with our trading partners across the Atlantic for years to come.”