Joe Biden will favour deal with EU over post-Brexit agreement with Britain

Joe Biden, who takes office this month - Credit: AFP via Getty Images

Joe Biden could scupper a deal between Downing Street and the White House in favour of re-igniting a new deal between the EU and US, it has been claimed.

An academic has claimed that, while Donald Trump is looking for a ‘symbolic’ gesture ahead of the US election, Joe Biden is looking for more ‘meaningful’ negotiations and is likely to seek out a deal with the European Union first.

Dalibor Rohac, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute at the London School of Economics, warned in one of his latest blogs that ‘the United States is heading into an election season with the disastrous economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic’

He explained: ‘Meaningful trade agreements require difficult compromises on both sides, upsetting interest groups. That is not what the incumbent administration is after.

‘With the announcement that the agreement ought to be completed in a year, everything suggests that president Trump is looking for an easy, purely symbolic gesture which furthermore stands no chance of getting through the current House of Representatives.’

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And he added that Biden’s administration ‘would be ill-advised to tie its hands with a UK trade deal before a return to some version of updated TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] negotiations with the European Union.’

Biden advocated for the TTIP talks when he was vice-president under Barack Obama, with the president at the time warning the UK could end up ‘back of the queue’ if it voted for Brexit.

Negotiations between the US and EU were halted under Trump, but Biden is said to favour a return of these talks over the offer of a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and US, with the Democratic Party in America continuing to signal a lack of enthusiasm for Brexit.

Earlier this month it was reported Boris Johnson’s administration is ‘desperate’ for Biden to win the US election to allow for more meaningful talks over Brexit with conditions that would make a deal more palatable.