Editorial: Business now has little to fear from Biden – so a victory for the rules can be toasted
In the run-up to the UK election in 2019, this newspaper said that whether you agreed with Jeremy Corbyn’s (ruinous) economic plans or found granting Boris Johnson a free hand with Brexit too much to bear, that Corbyn and his Labour Party did not deserve your vote.
The reason? The culture of unchecked anti-Semitism and racism within the ranks, alongside the trashing of democratic norms: of free speech, of the media’s right to report and question, of diversity of thought.
Assaults on democracy are bad for business.
We did not have a vote in the US election, but reflecting on what is now almost certainly a Biden win, we can say the same.
That no matter your views on Trump as a dealmaker, his performance on the economy, or his foreign policy brinkmanship – all of which deserve credit – his defeat is a victory for the rules-based order, for faith in the institutions of the west, and above all else for plain old decency.
His behaviour since the vote – including the most extraordinary speech anybody who follows politics has ever seen – only bears out that verdict.
The biggest winners of another four years of Trump in the Oval Office sit in Beijing and Moscow – and frankly, they are already making more inroads into the global order than we find comfortable.
Read more: Eyes turn to the Fed as US election result delayed
The US economy had been motoring for three years before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and its recovery deeply impressive.
It is tempting to say, sat here in Canada, that keeping the US economy on Trump’s tax-cut rocketboosters would have been just the tonic the global economy needed.
There is little to fear from a hamstrung Biden
Joe Biden’s necessary fawning to the left of his party to ensure his nomination – which saw him commit to all sorts of hare-brained schemes – meant the comparison with Trump was all the more striking.
But surveying the wreckage of three days of political drama, the global economy and the rules based order may have got the best of both worlds.
Biden will be unable to push through any of the radical economic restructuring he was half-heartedly pushing on the stump.
The fears of Bernie Sanders in Labor and Eliazbeth Warren in the Treasury evaporated the moment Americans refused to cede control of the Senate to the Democrats. Biden will be forced to govern as a centrist if he wants to push anything forward. The economy will have to be a vital part of his considerations.
And whilst he may not be able to reverse some of the DC rhetoric in regards to China, it seems unlikely he will be quite as bellicose when it comes to global trade as his predecessor. Fears that the end of a Trump presidency signal the end of any hope of a UK-US trade deal are, we think, overblown.
So all eyes now turn to the Fed. If a billion-dollar stimulus is unlikely to get through Congress, then the Fed will need to step in with their own package to keep the recovery going. They have shown boldness before – more will be needed.