Since becoming the United States president-elect, Joe Biden has signalled that restoring America’s leadership on the world stage is among his highest priorities – an intention aptly demonstrated by his Cabinet picks.
Biden’s nominees are “ready to lead the world, not retreat from it,” he said on November 24. “America is back.”
Perhaps nowhere is this return more urgent than in trade policy, a topic I follow closely as a scholar of international political economy. Over the past four years, US President Donald Trump has ripped up trade deals, launched damaging trade wars and gunked up the workings of international trade organisations.
All of this has ceded global economic leadership to China, as we can see from the trade negotiations Beijing recently oversaw with 14 other Asian nations. In November, the countries met in China’s capital and formally signed what is now the world’s largest regional free trade pact, covering nearly a third of humanity.
Biden no…