UN What does Biden’s win mean for Brexit? - No UK-US Trade deal that clashes with the Good Friday Agreement, Biden might visit the Brussels before London

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What does Biden’s win mean for Brexit?​

Election victory signals a reset in the US’s approach to post-Brexit trade talks with Britain

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent @lisaocarroll Sun 8 Nov 2020 09.08 GMT

A Joe Biden victory will have “big consequences for Brexit”, those close to the talks on the EU side have said, forcing the UK to think again over its approach to Northern Ireland and threat to disapply the withdrawal agreement.

Chris Coons, a close friend of Biden and a potential US secretary of state, told the BBC that Biden will want to “reimagine” the US’s transatlantic policy, the special relationship with the UK and its relationship with the EU, damaged by Donald Trump.

On Northern Ireland, he warned: “I would expect to be concerned about making sure that the Good Friday accords are respected and protected and that the ways in which the UK-EU terms are negotiated doesn’t put at risk the stability of the border terms in Northern Ireland”.

There is speculation that Biden’s first visit to Europe could be to Brussels and not London, Berlin or Paris, a clear sign that that the US wants to rebuild its relationship with Europe and repair the damage wrought by Trump in Nato, which is headquartered in Brussels, and through trade wars with Germany.

And there will be a reset in the approach of the US on trade talks with the UK. Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president who warned the UK would be at the back of the queue over Brexit. But he has more recently made his views clear – warning that if the UK government opts for no deal and in doing so carries out its threat to override parts of the the withdrawal agreement signed in January relating to the Northern Ireland protocol, there will be no trade deal with the UK.

In September, he said the Good Friday agreement, which ended decades of bloody conflict in the region, cannot be “a casualty of Brexit”. “Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period,” he said.

His views on the internal market bill will not, however, translate into a total reset for US-UK trade talks.

Georgie Wright, of the Institute for Government, says that if anything, Brexit will spur on the US to strike a trade deal with the UK as it could be a means of prizing open the door again for a trade deal with the EU.

Those on the EU side say both the US and Brussels have huge teams of negotiators and would have the capacity to run multiple talks.

“Trade is not top of the US agenda at the moment. After four years of the ‘America first’ doctrine, the Republicans don’t want any more trade deals, and the Democrats aren’t too hot on them either,” said Wright.

“It is hard to see how Biden would get a trade deal through Congress and a Republican Senate. But, it does see one advantage to a trade deal with the UK – and that is the possibility of gaining a foothold in Europe which it could use as a way of extracting more access from the EU. The thinking goes ‘if the UK, which has similar standards, accepts our goods – why can’t the EU market?’”she said.

Anthony Gardner, a former American ambassador to the EU, recently told an audience in Germany that while Brexit was bad, Biden valued the transatlantic relationship with Europe and with the UK.

“Here’s a dramatic difference: Donald Trump has only believed that the US-UK link was important, he was a cheerleader for Brexit. Joe Biden believes that the triangle of relationships, US-UK, UK-EU, US and EU, all have to work together, and you will see statements to that effect,” said Gardner.

SOURCE

Remainer Twitter seems excited about the prospect of Boris being pushed into accepting a Deal before the New Years because the Orange Man fading away, but I don't much faith in them. What do you think?
 
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I'm pretty sure that most people in Great Britain would be fine giving Northern Ireland back as its not really important to them in general and some see it as a cash sink and a waste of time. Pretty sure I've seen various polls of majority of english being fine splitting the union just so Brexit can happen anyways.

British Ulsters though will be screaming betrayal but who gives a shit about a bunch of knuckledragging orange fetishists anyways.

Though I'll fucking laugh if the UVF and equivalent start bombing the UK and Ireland so they can come back in, They seem like the sort to do so.

Anyways. UK is gonna UKuck to either the US and EU to get their trade deals or they deal with WTO tariffs and the shit that comes with it. Either way I get to enjoy this as a separatist.
 
Northern Ireland's precarious circumstance isn't even the lesson learned from the UK's tactics. That economy is irrelevant and fucked no matter what solution the UK comes to, since it long-since cast off the Brexit In Name Only option.
What's weird is the government attempting to pull a fast one on the EU, reneging on a withdrawal agreement they agreed to less than a year ago, and one which domestic policy was consumed by for months, and one which delayed Article 50's resolution for 10 whole months.
It's baffling the UK government thought they could flip this chicanery into it being themselves getting victimised, rather than the 27 constituent nations who've been waiting for the UK to tell them what the hell kind of result they're hoping for out of this (and hard mode: a result which isn't the UK having access to all the things members have without any of the obligations, inviting a complete dissolution of said international framework)

This ploy failed, and I really don't see why they bothered at all beyond bragging rights. The UK never gave a shit about NI. It's at best irrelevant and at worst a geopolitical nuisance, economically stranded without an intimate relationship with the Republic of Ireland, and an area the UK planned to gift to the Irish numerous times, but never quite got round to. To insist on its total validity as a constituent member of the UK now is really incongruent and jarring, especially when the Good Friday Agreement has a unique provision for secession. Whoever cooked up the idea doesn't like Northern Ireland no-dealing, and the implied boatloads of London subsidies and inexorable decline which will follow despite that. They like the idea of NI doing this, because it makes Brexit more final.
 

UK steel makers 'left behind' as US ends trade war​

The UK has been "left behind" according to steel makers after the US agreed to end a trade war over items that also included whiskey and Harley-Davidsons.

President Biden has signed a deal to end tariffs on steel imports from the EU, which were imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump.
But the agreement does not cover exports from the UK, putting British steelmakers at a disadvantage.
Trade body UK Steel said a deal for British producers was "sorely needed".

The tariffs, which came into force in 2018, nearly halved British steel exports to the US, Gareth Stace, director general of UK Steel, said.
The US is the second-largest market for British-made steel. But the new deal will put UK producers at a competitive disadvantage compared to European rivals who will be able to ship their products to the US without paying import taxes.

Booze and power boats​

In return, the EU removed retaliatory tariffs that it had put on whiskey, power boats and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
"Whilst it is promising to see the US take steps to open up access to its steel markets again, there is significant concern that UK producers have been left behind in this process and continue to wait for their own deal," Mr Stace said.
"The substantial competitive advantage that this deal provides EU steel producers over UK ones will undoubtedly result in our export orders to the US market being lost to EU exporters."
But International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has said the UK and US are in talks to remove "damaging tariffs" from British steel exports.

Ms Trevelyan tweeted: "We welcome the Biden administration's willingness to work with us to address trade issues relating to steel and aluminium.
"It is encouraging the US is taking steps to de-escalate this issue."

The US and EU hope the pact will limit the amount of so-called "dirty" steel from countries such as China, where steel production accounts for as much as 20% of all CO2 emissions. The country currently produces more than half of the world's steel.
"Together, the United States and European Union will work to restrict access to their markets for dirty steel and limit access to countries that dump steel in our markets, contributing to worldwide over-supply," the White House said.
"The arrangement is, of course, open to all like-minded partners. Steel manufacturing is one of the highest carbon emission sources globally," Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission said.

In a statement, a Department for International Trade spokesperson said: "The UK is committed to addressing both global steel overcapacity and decarbonisation, and we remain focused on agreeing a resolution that sees damaging tariffs removed to the benefit of businesses on both sides of the Atlantic."
"We welcome the Biden Administration's willingness to work with us to address trade issues relating to steel and aluminium, and it is encouraging that the US is taking steps to de-escalate this issue."
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We don't want to sell our steel to kid sniffers anyway.

Bring back the orange man or fuck off. I want my reality tv show back for season 2.
 
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