Joe Biden has made restoring America to its pre-Trump normalcy the animating force of his campaign and presidency. One of the planks at the core of his agenda is the promise to get the proverbial band of highly developed democratic nations back together.
America’s relations with its traditional 20th-century allies in Europe had suffered following Trump’s blustery go-it-alone foreign policy and decades of unease over issues like the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis. Biden would get back on board with internationalist priorities like meeting the climate crisis, increasing energy security, repairing supply chains fractured by Covid, and strengthening defense ties between democracies.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan crystalized the administration’s thinking in a speech this spring at the Brookings Institution, dubbing the investment-heavy approach a “new Washington consensus.”
Yet something happened on the way to Biden’s restoration of America’s pre-Trump internationalism: Many of the US’s allies like Japan, Canada, and especially the European Union have not been all-in. They see the Biden administration’s signature accomplishments — such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — less as long-awaited efforts to finally make good on promises of climate action and more as a threat to the ability of places like Europe to attract investment themselves.
At the moment Biden wanted the transatlantic democratic alliance to come together for a common purpose and approach, wonks on either side of the ocean are sniping at each other.
The brewing row between longtime allies is “mutually assured sanctimoniousness,” says macroeconomics commentator and self-described “globalization defender” Karthik Sankaran.
After decades of pleading with America to finally take action on issues such as climate, why are our closest partners so annoyed at us now that we’re actually doing what they asked?
The Biden administration’s “new…
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