Will Joe Biden really get rid of all traces of Trumpism from America?

Biden has wasted no time in making his mark on the White House. But, Sean O'Grady asks, will he undo all his predecessor’s work?

In many areas Biden will be unable to undo what went before (Reuters)

With the stroke of his pen, or leastways 17 signatures appended to executive orders, Joe Biden has begun what may be termed the “detrumpification” of America. Shortly after taking the oath of office, President Biden had America rejoin the Paris Agreement, the World Health Organisation and the international Iran nuclear deal; abolished the Muslim ban on travel to the United States; and placed his country on a “wartime” footing to deal with the Covid crisis and roll out 100 million vaccinations in 100 days. His new team represents a visible change from the old order, masked up and multicultural as they are. America’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, pronounced himself liberated to be able to talk freely about the science of the coronavirus, rather than having to swerve past sometimes bizarre political interference.  

The Biden administration already sounds, feels and acts differently – with no more angry tweets, childish tantrums and silly insults. Its earliest acts demonstrate a determination to dismantle some of President Trump’s signature policies just as surely as Trump sought to ditch those of the Obama-Biden administration. Yet just as Trump’s wipe of the palimpsest failed to obliterate all of his predecessor’s achievements, for example in leaving much of Obamacare in place, neither will President Biden be able to extirpate all traces of Trumpism – and nor does he plan to.  

The most concrete example, in all senses, is the additional sections of the “wall” on the border with Mexico, which will be left as a sort of monument to popular nationalism, Donald Trump’s unfinished symphony. Nor, to take another very obvious symbol of Trumpism, will the US embassy in Israel be switched back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The appointments Trump made to the Supreme Court cannot be undone, and the talk about a review of the court to increase its size (and tilt it back to a more liberal, activist outlook), may come to nought. If so, then in areas such as women’s rights and the historic Roe v Wade judgment, there might be a quiet shift in the law, and quite at odds with the feminist instincts of the current White House. Indeed across quite extensive areas of national life, Biden us either unwilling or unable to reverse what went before.

Trump’s economic policies will also survive remarkably unscathed. Some of Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporate America will be reversed, but most Americans (on less than $400,000/£292,000 a year) won’t be affected either way. Nor is Biden proposing to unpick Trump’s new trade deals. The Democrats’ 2020 manifesto contains plenty of promises to gratify even the most ardent protectionist, with “Buy American” policies for the public sector, “Made in America” rules and incentives to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, and to “take aggressive trade enforcement action against China” – hardly a break with Trumpian policy or rhetoric. The trade war with China may be conducted more politely, but there will be no early armistice.  

Biden will talk much tougher to Russia, but would he risk a confrontation over, say, Crimea or chemical weapons? Or a war with Kim Jong-un on the Korean peninsula. President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton and, indeed, Vice President Biden did not when they had the chance a few years ago. Relations with Nato, the EU, Britain, Canada and Mexico will be repaired, but there may be more continuity in foreign affairs than many on either side would care to admit.  

Biden will seek to mark much more of a departure in environmental and health policies. He wants to meet the Paris climate change targets, and intends to spend $2 trillion doing so, though even that sum may be inadequate. As someone who, when vice president in 2010, did more than most to put affordable healthcare in the statute book, Biden wants to “give every American access to affordable health care”, an ambitious aim in a country where many are wary of “socialised medicine”. Also controversial will be his plans to provide undocumented migrants with an eight-year path to citizenship.  

Despite his no doubt sincere intentions, Biden has less room for manoeuvre and less time than his the decisive mandate he received last November would suggest. His party has control of both houses of Congress, a great opportunity – but only with the slimmest of margins. Midterm elections in 2022 might cede control of the Senate and the House of Representatives back to the Republicans. If history is any guide, a deeply conservative Trumpified Republican Party will be endlessly obstructive over the budget and domestic policy, including education, civil rights and “culture war” issues. President Biden will also, like all chief executives, have to contend with awkward state governors and the judiciary.  

President Biden may also find his ambitions frustrated by the unexpected, the kind of “black swan” events that can distract and derail any administration. All-consuming crises can leave little time, energy or money for what seemed important in inauguration day. When George W Bush took over in 2001, for example, he wanted to concentrate on the home front, and avoid foreign entanglements. He had no idea that his early presidency would be dominated by relentless wars in Afghanistan and (albeit more arguably) Iraq, and his latter months in power by an international financial crisis. Other presidents have had their time in office wrecked and their reputations destroyed by unseen events: Jimmy Carter (the Iran hostage crisis), Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam) and Herbert Hoover (Wall Street Crash) were notably unfortunate in the turns of fate. To be possibly over-generous to President Trump, too, a global pandemic was hardly on many minds back in 2016, and had the coronavirus arrived a little later, or the vaccine a little earlier, he might now be contemplating what to do with a second term won fair and square. Biden has been in the game a long time and is the most experienced – 50 years in elected office – ever to take the presidency, but even he may not know what to do when confronted with what Donald Rumsfeld might call “unknowable unknowns”.