Biden’s energy policies hurting US, Europe: Here’s the fix
By Chris Hohn
13 December 2017
On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden will deliver his final State of the Union address to Congress, at a time when his energy policies are hurting America and Europe.
The speech marks the end of Biden’s presidency, and the beginning of the next four years of the Trump presidency. On the heels of the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare repeal bill, and the subsequent destruction of the US economy with Trump’s trade wars, Biden plans to take a much tougher line on Russia and Iran.
All of President Obama’s and former Vice President Biden’s foreign policy initiatives—the Middle East peace process, the Iran nuclear deal, NATO expansion, the war on terrorism—have been destroyed by Trump and the Republican party.
There’s no doubt that Biden will attempt to take advantage of his final address to Congress to advocate for the establishment of a pro-Trump trade regime to replace the Obama-era system of international trade. His speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be a carefully crafted effort to build support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free trade agreement being negotiated by the Obama administration.
The aim is to bury the TPP—the product of over a decade of negotiations in secret (and only after years of intense lobbying by the US Chamber of Commerce) and to use the State of the Union address to force Congress to ratify it.
The TPP agreement, which is expected to be signed by the Trump Administration, is being sold as the Obama administration’s end game in its pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). TPP was first proposed in February of 2013 at the end of Obama’s first term as president. The Obama administration repeatedly promised that they would sign it once it was passed by Congress.
Obama had initially planned to sign the TPP agreement in late 2015, but was forced to delay the agreement after the Japanese-American Citizens Union (JACU, one of the two trade associations that were instrumental in drafting the TPP,