The relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is a little less special after Brexit

President-elect Joe Biden and some other Democrats, including those with Irish-American blocs active in their districts, had raised the possibility that a Brexit without an agreement would result in a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and Ireland. and violated the Good Friday peace agreement, which the Clinton administration helped negotiate in 1998.

With an agreement that avoids the need for tariffs between the UK and Ireland, a member of the EU, this perspective has been avoided.

“I am pleased to see that this agreement preserves the Good Friday Agreement, which has maintained decades of peace for British and European peoples and guarantees that there will be no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland,” he said. the representative Richard. Neal (D., Mass.), Chairman of the U.S. House Tax and Trade Committee. “I look forward to the continued commitment of the United States to our trading partners across the Atlantic in the coming years.”

But even with this tension removed, in an important sense, Brexit has reduced the value of the relationship with the United States because, since January 31, the United Kingdom has no longer been in the corridors of power in Brussels. , influencing EU decisions.

“There is no doubt that we have lost an important element of our value to the United States by ceasing to be around the EU table,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the US and EU, and security adviser. national to the British government.

He said Washington used to consult London weekly on issues that mattered to it in Brussels, from the proposed EU legislation to relations with Russia. Now, London is no longer such an important conduit nor does it influence Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

Britain is likely to continue to be closer to the United States than other European capitals in some fields where there is a long association, including intelligence exchange and military cooperation.

And in many areas, the Biden administration’s approach to international affairs is likely to be more comfortable for the United Kingdom than the Trump administration’s mercurial approach, where allies would sometimes learn of major political developments in the UK. Twitter account of the president or White House leaks. .

Foreign policy experts believe that President Trump is accelerating the shift towards the policy of great powers just when the UK had decided to abandon one of the world’s great economic powers. Biden will try to reverse some of Mr. Trump’s legacy, but he won’t be able to erase it all.

British officials hope that Mr. Trump’s misguided attitude toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be replaced by a more pro-alliance president and that Mr. Biden will move with the Allies to seek a common approach to in Iran, after Mr. Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal still backed by the United Kingdom

As a country that has just withdrawn from one of the world’s three major trading powers, it is likely that the UK will also embrace a more constructive approach from the World Trade Organization, which Trump tried to undermine.

A spokesman for the Biden transition team said the president-elect made it clear he would support a strong UK and a strong EU and that the incoming administration appears to be working with them to meet the range of global challenges facing everyone.

These include climate change. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change and Biden said he would participate again. Mr. Biden has approved former Secretary of State John Kerry as special envoy to the climate and the UK is hosting the next United Nations-affiliated Climate Summit in November in Glasgow.

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

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

Another likely area of ​​cooperation with the United States and the United Kingdom is to confront China, which Trump did mostly alone, but Biden hopes to undertake with more help from allies and partner countries. The EU sees Washington as more equivocal as it prioritizes economic ties.

In a tweet seen as a warning in 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 consider a ‘investment.

In two areas, there are important issues for London: trade and politics.

Biden will inherit Trump’s incomplete trade negotiations with the UK A free trade agreement with the US would be a very important political signal for the Johnson administration, as a symbol of the UK’s freedom outside the EU to pursue its own trade. politics. An agreement is also strongly supported by the right wing of its Conservative party, which it believes secures Britain’s long-term distance from the EU’s economic and regulatory orbit.

U.S. trade experts say completing talks on a global deal by mid-next year is a high order, given Britain’s sensitivity to openness to US agriculture and ambivalence over trade deals within the Democratic Party. In July, legislation to facilitate the passage of trade agreements will expire, making any global agreement with the UK an arduous two-step process on Capitol Hill.

Trade agreements are unlikely to be Mr Biden’s first concern when he takes office. When the issue is raised, there is no guarantee that the UK will be a priority for Democrats, compared to the EU’s largest economic bloc.

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

Still, the trade emerged in a recent call between Messrs. Johnson and Biden, and U.S. and UK trade officials have been in contact since the election.

Katherine Tai, the election of Mr. Biden as the U.S. trade representative, has recent experience in understanding a compromise with her Democrats on the new version of the Trump administration’s U.S. trade pact. Washington and London generally agree on the turning point of this agreement — applying high labor standards for marketed products.

As for politics, there is still no evidence that Messrs. Biden and Johnson develop a close personal relationship that some U.S. presidents and British prime ministers have had in the past. While some lawmakers in Johnson’s party regret seeing Trump leave, others question whether there was any tangible benefit to the UK from the embrace of Brexit and its seemingly welcoming relationship with Johnson.

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

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