[Global Column] Trump's Legacy and Biden's Foreign Policy

Last November, President-elect Joe Biden declared that "America is back." Biden promised to abandon former President Donald Trump's "America First" banner and restore multilateralism and alliances. The goal of the Biden administration's future foreign policy can be summarized as restoring America's international leadership through multilateralism and strengthening alliances.

However, the Biden administration's foreign policy is not being pursued on a blank slate. The unprecedented incident in which Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, halting the final certification process of the election results, symbolizes the challenges facing the Biden administration.

Although President Trump will soon step down, Trumpism will pose a significant obstacle to the Biden administration's foreign policy going forward.

The Trump administration, which prioritized America First, pursued foreign policy based on a transactional relationship of costs and benefits. The America First policy aimed to bring direct financial gains to the United States. As a result, it triggered trade disputes with China and conflicts over defense cost-sharing with allies. The America First policy destabilized the international order and diminished America's international standing.

Nonetheless, due to the decline of the U.S. economy, American support for the America First policy remains quite solid. Although Trump failed to win re-election, he garnered over 74 million votes, the highest number in any U.S. presidential election except for Biden. Therefore, the Biden administration faces the challenge of newly establishing a domestic support base for its foreign policy of multilateralism and alliance strengthening.

Biden's emphasis on multilateralism and alliance strengthening is also a strategy to check China's influence. Jake Sullivan, appointed as the Biden administration's first National Security Advisor, emphasized the need to respond to China's growth through cooperation with allies. However, while the Trump administration rejected multilateralism and caused conflicts with allies through its America First policy, China strengthened economic cooperation with America's traditional allies. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), involving 15 Asia-Pacific countries excluding the U.S., was concluded last November. Additionally, in December last year, China and the European Union (EU) signed an investment agreement. While the Trump administration emphasized America First, a multilateral economic order centered on China has already borne significant fruit.

Biden stresses that it should be the United States, not China, that plays the leading role in determining the rules of the world order.

Multilateralism and alliance strengthening are methodologies to restore America's international leadership. In this regard, the Biden administration's foreign policy will show a more inclusive aspect compared to the Trump administration's America First. However, to overcome the legacy left by the Trump administration, it is highly likely that the Biden administration will demand active expressions of position from its allies.

As shown by Biden's concept of the "Democracy Summit," the more the Biden administration pursues an inclusive foreign policy, the more allies such as South Korea will be forced to choose between the U.S. and China. In this respect, the space for a foreign strategy of strategic ambiguity will be further reduced in the Biden era.

Jae-Hwan Jung, Professor of International Relations, University of Ulsan