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Biden’s legacy is full of horrors
October 6, 2024
Ali Al-Yousef
Aida Asaad

In his final speech to the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, US President Joe Biden stressed that Washington seeks to manage competition with Beijing responsibly so as not to veer toward conflict.

While such words seem less confrontational than his usual rhetoric targeting China, what he has been doing over the past years has greatly raised the possibility of conflict with China on both the economic and military fronts.
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden criticized his predecessor, Donald Trump, for imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese products, saying, “Trump doesn’t understand basics, and any new student of economics can tell us that the American people are paying his tariffs.” Biden had pledged to eliminate tariffs if elected president, but he broke his promise and instead doubled down on protectionist tariffs against China, most recently announcing in May a 100% tariff on electric vehicles made in China, and increasing tariffs on a range of Chinese products from steel, aluminum and solar cells to semiconductors, EV batteries, ship-to-shore cranes and medical products. The Biden administration has also added far more Chinese entities to the U.S. “notorious” trade restrictions list than Trump, and has abused the list, making it part of its crackdown on high-tech Chinese companies. The US has not only told US companies, but has also forced companies in its allied countries in Europe and Asia to decouple or de-risk their economies from the Chinese economy in order to curb China’s rise.

The US has been intimidating the Dutch company ASML, a world-leading manufacturer of chipmaking equipment, to curb its exports of advanced equipment to China. Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Dirk Beelgaerts told the media in Washington that ASML should be allowed to do business as freely as possible, adding that China is an important trading partner and we have our own economy that must be maintained.

The alleged fierce competition between Biden and China, in fact, has nothing to do with fair competition, as it includes all kinds of sabotage. The Biden administration believes in the saying that “if I can’t lift myself up, I will drag you down hard.” Biden has launched an all-out economic war against China, a war that could veer into conflict if left unchecked. On the security front, the Biden administration has been equally provocative, for example, trying to intervene on the Taiwan issue to test Beijing’s patience by threatening to cross Beijing’s red line. Its attempts have included then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, Biden’s delegation this year to attend the inauguration of the island’s chief executive, Lai Ching-te, Biden’s approval of several US arms sales to Taiwan, the State Department’s change of wording on its website, and the White House’s retraction of Biden’s statements that the US would come to Taiwan’s defence militarily. Washington has also been weaponising the Quad, the so-called US-India-Japan-Australia cooperation initiative, and AUKUS, the security alliance between Australia, the UK and the US, to provoke and threaten China. Like the US Congress, the Biden administration has also been dramatically intensifying its smear and disinformation campaigns against China, in order to make China look bad. Biden’s speech to the UN General Assembly was seen by some as a speech of sabotage. The speech was full of narcissistic innuendos and a poor attempt at self-glorification, and often stood in stark contrast to the facts on the ground, especially his statements regarding Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip. According to many US foreign policy experts, his biased foreign policy and his refusal to seriously urge Israel to stop the atrocities in Gaza were a major reason behind Israel’s ongoing assault on the Palestinian people, and this will be Biden’s legacy.
Weekly Fact-Checking Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jaafar Al-Khabouri