Johnson has Joe Biden problem on Brexit now

As Brexit trade talks enter a make-or-break final negotiating stretch, the impending changes in Washington can’t help but influence things. President-elect Joe Biden isn’t going to express a view over fishing quotas or the impasse on state subsidies. But his election increases the costs for Prime Minister Boris Johnson of a failure in the negotiations.
A hard split won’t just damage Britain’s trade and political ties with the EU; it will irritate the Americans, too — especially if it creates problems with the Irish border. The contrast in US administrations couldn’t be starker. Donald Trump’s very presence encouraged Johnson’s Brexit brinkmanship with Brussels. Britain could threaten to walk away knowing a friendly White House approved. Trump was openly hostile toward Europe, and he was even promising a quick US-UK trade deal as a reward for splitting from the single market.
The material promises of an agreement with the Americans were always exaggerated. In a best case scenario, a free-trade deal would add 15.3 billion pounds ($20.15 billion) to the British economy over 15 years — a 0.16% boost to gross domestic product (or a little over double the estimated impact of the Japan-UK trade deal).
And any agreement would have had to advance the interests of US farmers, which would have carried a political price for Johnson. With Biden’s election, the best bet for enhanced trade is if both countries join the trans-Pacific trade pact (known as CPTPP), a group of 11 nations including Canada, Mexico, Japan and Australia.
Biden’s election is undoubtedly awkward for Johnson. The two have never met, and it’s a little late for first impressions. Biden has opposed Brexit, Johnson’s career-defining project. Then there’s Ireland, where Biden has roots and loyalties. The President-elect has echoed other Democratic lawmakers in saying that Britain can forget a US trade deal if Johnson undermines the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland. The prime minister is threatening to do exactly that by using the Irish border as last-ditch leverage in his trade talks with Brussels.
For Team Biden and many Democrats, Brexit is an act of self-isolation. The UK and the US will retain plenty of common interests from trade and intelligence to fighting climate change, but losing its seat at the EU table makes Britain less valuable. Even without Trump, Washington won’t have the interest in Europe that it once did.
How the next few weeks unfold will dictate whether a businesslike familiarity returns to London and Washington’s relations or the differences are amplified. A no-deal Brexit at the end of the year — piling costs and uncertainty on businesses and consumers on top of Covid — will be seen as a supremely selfish, Trumpian gambit that pulls down the tent rather than accept compromise. The messy aftermath would probably complicate international preparations for rolling out any new vaccine, for preparing for next year’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow and for focussing on global economic recovery.
The immediate source of contention is the Internal Markets Bill, a controversial piece of proposed legislation that would let Johnson’s government change how the UK applies the Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of Britain’s divorce deal with the EU. The bill’s offending clauses were defeated in the House of Lords, but Johnson has vowed not to back down. The government claims the law is merely a backstop in case there’s no EU trade agreement or the existing mechanisms don’t work (as in, are not to the government’s liking).
Threatening to undermine an international treaty in this way is unlikely to wash with the new White House, any more than it does in Dublin.

—Bloomberg