Biden’s big trip to Europe framed by Ukraine urgency
US PRESIDENT Joe Biden has made multiple key presidential visits to Europe since 2021, yet his trip to France this week may be his most important yet.
With the war in Ukraine still raging, there are growing signs of Kyiv being on the backfoot, militarily. It is even possible that 2024 could see Russia delivering a decisive breakthrough.
In late May, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned the “situation in Ukraine has once more dramatically deteriorated”. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently asked the West to become more involved in the war because of the extremely unfavourable challenges facing his troops on the front line.
Unexpectedly, Biden bent in recent days to international pressure to allow Ukraine to use Us-made weapons to hit Russian territory for the first time. This after other Western allies, including Germany and France, eased their own rules, after Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg asserted the “time has come” for change.
To be sure, the long-term US policy of stopping Kyiv deploying long-range missiles to strike inside Russia – across the board – has not been altered. Instead, the change, for now, is limited to Ukraine using US weapons for counter-fire purposes in Kharkiv.
Nonetheless, the shift could be significant, and a potential sign of things to come, especially if Russia makes much more ground in coming weeks.
The ongoing war in Ukraine is a compelling context for Biden’s historic visit, which will see him and other world leaders participate on Thursday (Jun 6) in the 80th anniversary ceremonies commemorating the Allied forces’ D-day landing at Normandy.
On Friday, he will deliver a set piece speech on defending freedom and democracy at Pointe du Hoc.
This ceremonial leg of the visit will be supplemented on Saturday with bilateral discussions in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. The agenda beyond Ukraine will include China; climate change; and deepening the Us-european trade and investment relationship.
Three and half years into his presidential terms, Biden has significantly improved transatlantic ties overall, since the end of the Trump presidency, with significant cooperation over Ukraine key to this. However, there have been significant bilateral tensions in some key policy areas, including the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
IRA is the some US$370 billion package for clean tech, which poses a potentially major risk for the EU’S goal to remain a preeminent global centre for the green industrial revolution.
There is a growing sense in Europe that its edge in this “race” is imperilled by the assertive green industrial strategy of the US, with the Biden team potentially releasing an IRA 2 if the president is re-elected, threatening to lure European-based firms, costing jobs and shuttering factories.
Patching over differences
To try to patch over these differences, Macron and Biden will stress this week the importance of US-EU joint efforts to accelerate the global clean energy economy based on secure, resilient supply chains and deeper cooperation in critical and emerging technologies, including digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence.
This includes the agreement Brussels and Washington still hope to reach on critical minerals that will allow Europeanbased companies to have access to certain IRA subsidies, if they provide part of the raw materials needed back in the US for manufacturing processes. This would replicate a similar US deal that was agreed last year with Japan.
At the same time, both sides are reportedly still deep in negotiations on a socalled Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminium agreement.
If a deal is not done, US and EU tariffs on steel and aluminium would potentially snap back, according to the provisional bilateral agreement reached in October 2021, which relates back to original measures in 2018 when then president Donald Trump imposed tariffs on European imports.
The transatlantic allies are reportedly discussing an agreement that might see a “grand bargain” on these issues, which would end some or all existing US and EU tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.
Overall, what Europe is seeking here, instead of competition in this area with the US, is a more cooperative framework.
This might be akin to that agreed last year between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that has been depicted as an Eu-canadian green alliance.
Europe is looking to Canada as a minerals-rich country, including potash, palladium, niobium and uranium. With Europe heavily dependent on sourcing raw materials, including from China, it is hoping to reduce this dependency with trusted partners, including Canada.
It is not just Brussels driving this, but also individual EU member states. Last year, for instance, Germany reached an agreement with Canada which will see the latter export hydrogen from 2025.
The remaining Us-european tensions underline that while Biden is an arch-atlanticist, his support for EU nations is not unqualified. Washington and Brussels do not have identical interests, and this complicates bilateral ties from time to time.
Moreover, even the attitudes of proeuropean Democrats like Biden have grown more complicated to Europe as the continent’s integration has deepened. In the economic arena, for instance, the drive towards the European Single Market led to US concerns about whether this would evolve into a “fortress Europe”.
Similarly, the creation of European Monetary Union prompted worries about the dilution of US primacy in the financial sector and macroeconomic policy. Moreover, in competition policy, the increasing assertiveness of the European Commission has periodically raised US concerns about EU overreach.
Renewed hope
Nonetheless, there is common recognition across Europe that, taken overall, the Biden team’s approach to the EU has been much more cooperative than conflictual. It has stood in sharp contrast to Trump, who said during his presidency that “I think the EU is a foe, what they do to us (the US) in trade”.
So, Biden’s policy is much more in accord with longstanding US policy towards Europe, as embodied in John Kennedy’s 1962 Atlantic Partnership speech.
The core US view for decades was that a united Europe would make future wars in the continent less likely; create a stronger partner for the US in meeting the challenges posed by the Soviet Union and now Russia; and offer a more vibrant market for building transatlantic prosperity.
Taken together, this gives the EU renewed hope for the future of transatlantic ties at a crucial time, given the growing urgency in Ukraine. The bilateral relationship will be stabilised further, in coming months, if Washington and Brussels can agree new accords in areas such as critical minerals, steel and aluminium in advance of November’s US presidential election.