President Joe Biden has announced that he will meet with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in person prior to the meeting of the G7 nations this week in order to reaffirm the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom, however, potential rifts remain.
Despite long-held concern that Joe Biden would favour relations with the European Union over the United Kingdom due to his anti-Brexit position, the President announced on Sunday that he would in fact first meet with his British counterpart before EU leaders.
“In the United Kingdom, after meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson to affirm the special relationship between our nations, I will participate in the G-7 summit,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post on Sunday.
The president said that during his European tour, he will be seeking to gain cooperation on the pandemic response and on issues such as climate change, both of which are seen as common ground with the globalist-minded Boris Johnson.
President Biden said that he will also be looking to further his push for a global corporation tax rate of at least 15 per cent.
The British government, which only freed itself from the economic control of the European Union this year, has been seen as hesitant to sign on to such an agreement as it may hamper the country’s ability to attract businesses post-Brexit. Yet Biden seems to have won an early victory on this front after the British Chancellor Rishi Sunak indicated last week he supported pegging Britain’s rate of tax to the U.S. at the behest of the President.
Another potential rift between Biden and Boris may come over the issue of the Northern Ireland protocol, which was agreed to under the Brexit divorce settlement.
The agreement was crafted to prevent a hard border from being established between Northern Ireland, or Ulster, and the rest of the island of Ireland. The result has meant that Northern Ireland has effectively been left under the control of the European Single Market, separating it economically from the rest of the United Kingdom and enraging the unionist (pro-British) majority, who opposed the deal in the first place.
The Biden administration has consistently sided with the European Union over the imposition of internal borders in the UK, warning that if Boris abandons the protocol it could spark another violent conflict in Northern Ireland, collapsing the Good Friday peace agreement, of which America is a guarantor.
A senior American diplomatic source told The Times: “The administration is now convinced that the protocol has to be made to work and is integral to the peace process.”
Mr Biden, who has been keen on highlighting his Irish ancestry, has previously warned that if peace is jeopardised in Northern Ireland, then trade between the UK and the U.S. would suffer.
However, according to The Times, Biden will also use his European trip to put pressure on the EU to be more flexible and less “bureaucratic” in negotiations over the protocol.
Mr Johnson, for his part, will reportedly look to secure deals at the G7 meeting which would see the world’s largest economies vaccinate the entire world by next year.
“The world is looking to us to rise to the greatest challenge of the post-war era: defeating Covid and leading a global recovery. Vaccinating the world by the end of next year would be the single greatest feat in medical history,” Johnson said.
Mr Johnson is also reportedly looking for support for a “Global Pandemic Radar” surveillance system, which would serve as an early warning system for future pandemics, according to The Sun.
The two leaders will also place a heavy influence on their shared green agenda goals, with Mr Biden writing: “With the United States back in the chair on the issue of climate change, we have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress that curbs the climate crisis and creates jobs by driving a global clean-energy transition.”
Both Johnson and Biden have taken to using the Great Reset slogan ‘Build Back Better‘ and have pushed for the formation of a so-called ‘green economy’ in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The G7 Summit will take place in Cornwall, England between June 11-13.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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