Saturday, February 27, 2021
The US Election: will the EU win or lose?
The implications of a Joe Biden victory versus a second term for Donald Trump on the US-EU relationship will become clearer after this week. In its September report, UBS stated: “Most national elections are not global events, but the US election is one exception.”
“The less multilateral approach adopted by the US to tackling the world’s problems, from trade to geopolitics, has left Europe somewhat isolated,” UBS said. “Whatever path the US decides to take in the future will likely have important ramifications for US-Europe relations and their respective economic progress.”
The world’s largest wealth manager noted that the US election will have an effect on eurozone trade, since the US is the euro area’s single most important trading partner and accounts for 14% of all its exports.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to set punitive tariffs on European car exports, something deeply concerning especially for Germany’s powerful automotive sector. In 2018, he slapped duties of 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminium.
If Trump were to win, “US-EU trade tensions will likely remain, but increased tariffs are unlikely in the near term,” UBS says, and he “is likely to keep pressure on the EU to support NATO” and be “less willing to work with Europe to engage with China.” Ultimately, it could lead to “increased fragmentation in global trade” the bank said.
If Biden wins, UBS believes it could lead to the easing of trade tensions, with steel tariffs potentially being overturned and threats towards the EU auto industry dwindling.
“However, the positive economic benefit of this [a Biden win] would be marginal, in our view,” UBS said. “Swift progress toward a US-EU trade deal appears unlikely.”
Donald Trump has fostered a confrontational relationship with many EU countries since his victory in 2016, with much of his aggression focussed upon Germany and its chancellor Angela Merkel, criticising her decisions to accept refugees fleeing the Syrian war, and Germany’s insufficient NATO contributions. Many German politicians have been vocal about the fact that under Trump, the transatlantic relationship has deteriated.
Another Trump victory could see more protectionism which would seriously harm EU companies — the European Union ran a €153bn surplus with the US in 2019.
Biden is the more appealing candidate for European companies. He (Biden) said that he would sign the US up to the Paris Climate Agreement again, after Trump withdrew from it in 2019. He has also indicated he would reverse Trump’s move to cut US funding to the World Health Organisation, stating in June this year that “it is essential to coordinating the global response during a pandemic, and the United States should be leading that response as we had in the past.”
But even if the Democratic candidate were to win, the transatlantic relationship may never be what it once was. "Everyone who thinks everything in the transatlantic partnership will be as it once was with a Democratic president underestimates the structural changes,” German foreign minister Heiko Maas told the German Press Agency in the Summer.
Hans Kundnani, a senior research fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House, likewise argues that the relationship between the US and Europe was faulty even before Trump came along. “The tendency among Atlanticists to idealise US policy towards Europe before Trump entered the White House obscures the pressures on the transatlantic relationship that were already evident prior to his run for the presidency in 2016,” Kundnani says in his analysis.
He suggests that the US’s increasing focus on China has meant European nations have come under pressure to take more responsibility for their own security. Kundnani says that even if Trump gets re-elected, “Europeans are unlikely to achieve ‘strategic autonomy’ but could in fact be more splintered, with France and like-minded member states pushing to create defence initiatives within the EU “while others such as Poland look to further bilateralise their security relationship with the US.”
Of course a victory for Europe may not play so well with No. 10, the Democrats have already said they will not look kindly upon a UK-US deal that negatively impacts the Good Friday Agreement. Biden stated that he wouldn’t allow peace in Northern Ireland to become a “casualty of Brexit”. Ultimately if there is a win for the EU, that doesn’t mean there will be a win for the UK. If the EU prevails after this election, it is safe to assume they will not be sharing their good fortune with the UK. Then again, that also goes both ways.
Whatever the outcome, a ‘new world’ will be upon us this week. Good luck America.
Book Review: A higher loyalty - James Comey
*Note from author: this blog was written on July 28th 2020*
Decency, ethics, morals, credibility and a sense of fairness (of what is legally right and morally right) are at the core of this book. James Comey, former Director of the FBI, delves deep into his experience and time witnessing leadership and talks about what being a great leader means for him. He draws sharp sketches of key players in three US administrations during his time as the country’s senior law enforcement officer and with his exposure to other great figures explains the different but captivating styles of leading. Of course, his detailed pictures of leaders allow us to draw our own conclusions about the last person he describes in the book (Trump) - someone he doesn’t consider to be a leader.
Well written and detailed, he gives those of us who have less understanding of the structure of either the FBI or the control the president has, a better, deeper and broader understanding of it and its key personnel. For example, the Director of the FBI does not answer to the president, but to the Attorney General. FBI Directors usually have a tenure of 10 years in office, ensuring no political bias between parties goes on. One of Comey’s overriding missions is the long-term safeguarding of the FBI’s independence from being caught up in the middle of the Washington cross-fire and to rebuild public trust in it. But there’s also an implicit hope that Trump, whom he describes as a “forest fire”, will finally pay the penalty for obstructing justice.
Comey’s memoir of his tenure as the shortest-serving of the FBI’s six directors was an international, headline-grabbing event. In the book he is methodical in his approach in describing the events leading up to and after the 2016 election: the story of the intertwined mess of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation, Russia’s unprecedented attack on the election and his firing by President Trump.
The only reason anyone is able to read Comey’s book is because of the shock election of Donald Trump, a character who is mentioned only late in the book but whose presence looms on nearly every page. “We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country, with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalised, and unethical behaviour is ignored, excused or rewarded,” Comey writes on the book’s opening page.
Comey is a man who has profound respect for law and justice, and has a loathing of bullies. He is a student and practitioner of ethical leadership. He is a deeply reflective person. The New York Times said “He is what Saul Bellow would call a first-class noticer”. Yes, he tries to make himself look good by talking about his noble motives, but he is using himself as a template for good leadership, and when he compares Trump against this, he found Trump didn’t measure up.
He may have lost his position, but he has gained a long-lasting legacy of decency and fairness. My biggest takeaways from the book were; firstly, the undeniable need for fair and trustworthy leadership, in any role. If you are a manager of a small village store or the representative for a major political office, if you do not have the trust or the ability to connect with your staff, you will not succeed in helping yourself or them. Secondly, it is to trust your own instincts and to not give in. Comey was put in many situations where his beliefs and morals would be compromised in the shadow of those more powerful. They would have undoubtedly made his life easier if he had ‘gone along’ with them, but, it proved the importance of ethical leadership and inevitably a Higher Loyalty to the values of his institution which he held so strong.
My favourite quotation from the book was, “Ethical leaders do not run from criticism, especially self-criticism, and they don’t hide from uncomfortable questions. They welcome them."
I have no hesitation in giving this book five out of five stars. As lockdown continues to grant me the extra time to read into subjects I couldn’t squeeze in before, I thought I would share my thoughts on it and hope you have enjoyed it or found it useful.
From Watergate to COVIDgate – how my weekends have changed my perception of certain key events.
*Note from author: this blog was written on the 6th May 2020.*
This pandemic has brought about changes to all aspects of our lives – not least how we use our time. My weekends are no longer a time to meet friends or go to events but have become, courtesy of my uncle who is a Doctor of History, a series of history lessons.
One of my biggest hobbies is learning about American political history and why certain events in the US continue to shape the modern world.
This weekend's 'history lesson' was about the Presidency of Richard Nixon. He has the distinction of being the first president to resign and the first to attempt to ignore the first amendment’s ‘freedom of speech’ by trying to 'take down' publications which were publishing the Pentagon Papers in the 70's and investigating the Watergate scandal.
Nixon's failures were the stuff of dark tragedy: uneven judgement and a deeply suspicious character verging on delusional, combined with great political gifts and considerable vision for the Republican party. He not only opened up U.S. relations with China but also reached an important arms-limitation agreement with the Soviet Union. He supported a number of progressive domestic policies, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He also ordered the important desegregation of schools. But the drama of Nixon concludes with his resignation under a cloud of wrongdoing. For obstructing the investigation of a petty crime committed by some of his own campaign operatives—an attempt to break into the Democratic National Headquarters. Nixon's name and reputation will forever be linked with one word: Watergate. Yet even before this scandal, he tried to abuse his power and operate above the law. He attempted to discredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers, taking The Washington Post, The New York Times and other newspapers to the supreme court, completely undermining the First Amendment. The courts sided with the publishers and held that the government had no right to invoke the newspapers for publishing excerpts of the papers.
It seems Nixon was always fighting an ‘invisible enemy’, something Donald Trump said of this pandemic. What they both exhibit is a leadership that falls short during a crisis and a reluctance to hold their hands up when they have made mistakes. In Nixon's case, he blamed the press for uncovering his own administration's political secrets about the Vietnam war. Trump on the other hand has blamed The World Health Organisation among many others instead of openly admitting he didn't prepare America for a Pandemic.
One of these presidents was undone by mishandling a situation, the other most likely will be. As historian Tariq Ali said, “History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.”
Spectacle
