As President Joe Biden swept into office, he framed his foreign policy largely as an overarching departure from his predecessor — on matters ranging from immigration agreements to European energy to Chinese tariffs.
But as he faces the biggest foreign policy crisis of his presidency to date, Biden has continued a practice of quietly reverting to foreign policies established by former President Donald Trump or those pushed by congressional Republicans.
With his decision this week to ban imports of Russian oil, Biden took the latest step toward the foreign policy Republicans have pushed him to adopt.
The pressure to impose restrictions on Russian oil had become bipartisan by the time Biden announced the new steps his administration was taking to deter Russia. Democratic congressional leaders were preparing a bill that would have banned importing Russian oil legislatively despite the White House moving ahead with its own executive order on the issue.
But in other areas, Biden has reverted to Trump-era foreign policies that he campaigned against and attempted to reverse, with sometimes disastrous results.
And, like Trump, he has occasionally ruffled feathers among Western leaders long thought to be unshakable friends of the United States.
For example, Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron tussled over what Biden later described as a “clumsy” submarine deal last year, leading France to recall its top envoy to the U.S. for the first time in more than 100 years.
Here are some of the foreign policy reversals Biden has made.
NORD STREAM 2
In May, Biden waived sanctions on a Russian company building a pipeline that would carry natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The move prompted harsh criticism from Republicans who warned that doing so essentially greenlighted the completion of a project that would give Russia greater influence in Europe.
Biden administration officials defended the move by noting that the pipeline was already mostly constructed and would soon be operational regardless of continued sanctions.
Trump had approved the sanctions on companies assisting with Nord Stream 2 in 2019, hoping to stop Russia from growing its share of the European energy market.
At the time, European countries, and Germany in particular, had criticized Trump’s sanctions as an overreach. Biden’s reversal of the Trump approach was cast as a way to repair the U.S. relationship with Europe last year.
But Biden faced pressure from Republicans to reinstate the sanctions — most notably from Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, who had placed a hold on Biden’s State Department nominees over his objection to the sanctions waiver. Cruz lifted his hold in late February when Biden reinstated sanctions on the company overseeing Nord Stream 2.
MEETING TEAM MADURO
Biden dispatched a team of top officials to Venezuela over the weekend to meet with aides to its president, Nicolas Maduro, in an effort to address concerns regarding Venezuela’s close relationship with Russia, among other things.
Some have called for the Biden administration to restart the oil trade with Venezuela in order to address oil shortages that have sent American gas prices soaring. Others have warned that if the situation with Russia further deteriorates, Venezuela could cause security issues for the U.S. due to its alliance with the Kremlin.
However, Biden lambasted then-President Trump in June 2020 over his comments signaling an openness to meet with Maduro.
“He doesn’t think that Maduro is that bad of a guy?” Biden reportedly told donors during a virtual campaign event. “He’s not really a dictator or something to that effect. Good Lord.”
CHINESE TARIFFS
Biden has left in place many of the tariffs on Chinese goods that he criticized when Trump imposed them, using them as leverage to get China to meet commitments that Trump set during negotiations with Beijing.
“President Trump may think he’s being tough on China,” Biden said during a speech in July 2019 in which he took aim at the Trump tariffs. “All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers losing and paying more.”
But pressed in January on why he had not yet removed remaining tariffs, which Trump had threatened to leave intact until China purchased more American goods, Biden said he would not remove the duties until China purchased more U.S. goods.
“I’d like to be able to be in a position where I can say they’re meeting the commitments, or more of their commitments, and be able to lift some of it. But we’re not there yet,” Biden said.
‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’
One of Biden’s first directives upon taking office was to end the Trump administration’s policy of asking asylum-seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the southern border while courts adjudicated their cases.
Like other Democrats, Biden had cast the policy as inhumane, and he sought to soften the perception of the U.S. immigration agenda by casting aside Trump’s policies — regardless of how effective they’d proven to be.
A federal judge later ruled that Biden’s reversal of the policy was unlawful and ordered the administration to reinstate it to the dismay of many Democrats.
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Biden also faced enormous political pressure last year over spiking illegal immigration numbers at the border. In defense of his handling of the situation, Biden attempted to lay the blame on Mexico for what he said was the country’s refusal to take back migrants in detention despite his own decision to end an agreement that obligated Mexico to do so.
The Biden administration is now reinstating the “Remain in Mexico” policy through negotiations with Mexican leaders thanks to the court order.
