Biden/Harris day one

 The presidential team-elect has already signalled that protecting fellow-Americans from SARS/CoV-2 is top of their agenda for 21st January 2021 and their team has already started to be assembled. There are many other reversals of Trump policy expected. He will start to reverse the tax cuts introduced by Trump, though it will need all Biden's networking skills to get this through Congress.  He will almost certainly remove the restrictions on incomers from mostly Muslim nations. 

Slightly more concerning from the international point of view is the manifesto pledge to force federal agencies to buy only US-sourced goods and services. That will be more than made up for by returning to the World Health Organisation and the Paris agreement on climate change. 

Return to the negotiation table with Iran may take longer. Although Iran kept her side of the uranium enrichment bargain, and was independently certified as having done so in spite of Trump's fake reports to the contrary, there must be concern about the Islamic Republic's continuing subsidy of terrorist organisations abroad. One would hope that Biden will accompany the olive branch with conditions.

But there is one other urgent job to repair the damage from Trump: restore confidence in international trade. The World Trade Organisation is in stasis as a result of Trump's refusal to cooperate on the international stage. As the New York Times reported last year:

Over the past two years, Washington has blocked the W.T.O. from appointing new members to a crucial panel that hears appeals in trade disputes. Only three members are left on the seven-member body, the minimum needed to hear a case, and two members’ terms expire on Tuesday. With the administration blocking any new replacements, there will be no official resolution for many international trade disputes

This is of particular concern to the UK as the Johnson government lets the EU trade negotiations wither, throwing us back on WTO trading terms in 2021. It is essential that a WTO disputes procedure is in place. However, we are not the only nation affected and in the absence of a strong international body, it is clearly the weakest who will suffer. Surely Biden and Harris will not want that on their conscience, however concerned they are about US employment.