The relationship between the US and the UK is a little less special after Brexit

President-elect Joe Biden and some other Democrats, including those with active Irish-American blocs in their districts, were concerned about the possibility that a no-deal Brexit would result in a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and Ireland and in would be contrary to the Good Friday peace agreement, which the Clinton administration helped broker in 1998.

With a deal that avoids the need for tariffs between the UK and EU member Ireland, that prospect has been averted.

“I am pleased to see this deal uphold the Good Friday Agreement, which has maintained decades of peace for the British and European peoples and ensures that there will be no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland,” said Rep. . Richard Neal (D., Mass.), Chairman of the US House Tax and Trade Committee. “I look forward to continuing the US cooperation with our trading partners across the Atlantic in the years to come.”

But even if this tension is allayed, Brexit has diminished the value of its relationship with the US in an important respect, as the UK has no longer been in the corridors of power in Brussels and influencing EU decisions since January 31.

“There is no doubt that we have lost a significant portion of our value to the US by no longer sitting at the EU table,” said Kim Darroch, a former UK ambassador to the US and the EU, and national security adviser to the US. British. government.

He said Washington consulted London on a weekly basis on issues Brussels cared about, from proposed EU legislation to relations with Russia. Now London is no longer such an important channel to or influence on Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

Britain is likely to stay closer to the US than other European capitals in some areas of long-standing cooperation, including intelligence sharing and military cooperation.

And in many areas, the Biden administration’s approach to international affairs is likely to be more comfortable for the UK than that of the mercurial Trump administration, where allies were sometimes told of major policy developments on the president’s Twitter account or from leaks. the White House. .

President Trump is seen by foreign policy specialists as speeding up a shift back to superpower politics, just as the UK had decided to leave one of the world’s greatest economic powers. Mr. Biden will try to undo some of Mr. Trump’s legacy but will not be able to erase everything.

British officials expect that Mr Trump’s dubious stance on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be replaced by a president more supportive of the alliance, and that Mr Biden will work with allies for a common approach to Iran, after the Mr. Trump unilaterally withdrew. from the nuclear deal that is still supported by the UK

As a country that has just pulled out of one of the world’s three major trading powers, the UK is also likely to welcome a more constructive approach to the World Trade Organization, which Mr Trump sought to undermine.

A spokesman for the Biden transition team said the president-elect has made it clear that he will support a strong UK and a strong EU, and that the incoming government wants to work with them to address the range of global challenges they are all facing. to grab.

These include climate change. Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement, and Mr Biden said he would choose it again. Mr Biden has appointed former Secretary of State John Kerry as a special climate envoy, and the UK is hosting the next United. Climate summit in Glasgow in November.

The UK will also host a group summit of seven major industrialized countries next year.

“The Americans will want to shape the outcome of both meetings by working with us,” Darroch said.

Another likely area of ​​cooperation with the US and the UK is the confrontation with China, which Mr Trump usually did on his own, but Mr Biden hopes to do business with more help from allies and partner countries. The EU is seen as more ambiguous in Washington because it prioritizes economic ties.

In a tweet seen as a warning to Brussels, Biden adviser Jake Sullivan said this week that the US would like to consult on the future economic relationship between the EU and China as the two are considering an investment pact.

There are important questions for London in two areas: trade and politics.

Mr Biden will inherit Mr Trump’s incomplete trade talks with the UK A free trade agreement with the US would be a hugely important political signal to Mr Johnson’s government, as a symbol of the UK’s freedom outside the EU. own trade to pursue policy. An agreement is also strongly supported by the right wing of its Conservative party, who see it as securing Britain’s long-term distance from the EU’s economic and regulatory job.

US trade experts say finalizing talks on a comprehensive deal by mid-next year is a daunting task, given Britain’s sensitivities about opening up to US agriculture and ambivalence about trade deals within the Democratic Party. Legislation to ease the passage of trade deals expires in July, making a comprehensive agreement with the UK on Capitol Hill a painstaking two-step process.

Trade deals are probably not Mr Biden’s primary concern when he took office. If he does focus on the question, there is no guarantee that the UK will be a priority for the Democrats, compared to the larger EU economic bloc.

“I think we should first look at what we would do with the EU,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., NY), who will chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee starting January. “Then we can also look at the UK,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

Still, trade came to the fore in a recent appeal between Messrs. Johnson and Biden, and US and UK trade officials have been in touch since the election.

Katherine Tai, Mr Biden’s choice for the US Trade Representative, has recent experience hammering a compromise with fellow Democrats over the Trump administration’s new version of the North American Trade Pact. The sticking point in that deal – enforcing high labor standards on traded products – is something Washington and London broadly agree on.

Politically, there is no evidence yet that Messrs. Biden and Johnson will develop a close personal relationship that some US presidents and British prime ministers have had in the past. While some lawmakers in Mr Johnson’s party are sorry to see Mr Trump leave, others question whether the UK has had any tangible benefit from his embrace of Brexit and its seemingly cozy relationship with Mr Johnson.

That closeness and Mr. Johnson’s 2016 claim that President Obama may have had an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire” because of his “partial Kenyan descent” means that for some of Mr. Biden’s allies in the Democratic Party, Mr. Johnson has work to do to build bridges with the new administration.

Write to Stephen Fidler at [email protected] and William Mauldin at [email protected]