America last: Biden’s first day in office

The US will return to a global order that has failed to provide tangible benefit for Americans

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President Joe Biden with his wife Jill (Getty)
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After months of speculation, we finally know what a Joe Biden presidency will look like. The newly inaugurated 46th President of the United States released a list of executive actions he intends to take on his first day in office. Biden’s governance will not be about centrism or socialism, but about corporatism and globalism. Gone are the days of Trump’s ‘America First’ policy. ‘America Last’ Biden has taken the reins.

During his inaugural address, Biden delivered a message to those ‘beyond our borders’.

‘We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again,’ he promised.

What…

After months of speculation, we finally know what a Joe Biden presidency will look like. The newly inaugurated 46th President of the United States released a list of executive actions he intends to take on his first day in office. Biden’s governance will not be about centrism or socialism, but about corporatism and globalism. Gone are the days of Trump’s ‘America First’ policy. ‘America Last’ Biden has taken the reins.

During his inaugural address, Biden delivered a message to those ‘beyond our borders’.

‘We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again,’ he promised.

What he meant is that the United States will return to a global order that has failed to provide tangible benefit for Americans. It will use their taxpayer dollars to bail out other countries, it will sacrifice their lives for endless wars, and it will ship their jobs overseas.

One of Biden’s first orders of business will be to rejoin the World Health Organization, which Trump pulled funding from after it helped China cover up its mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. The WHO infamously said on January 14 of last year that ‘Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.’ WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised China for setting ‘a new standard for outbreak response’ and recommended against travel restrictions after a trip to Beijing.

Biden will also have the US rejoin the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The accord offered no legal enforcement mechanisms to get countries to actually commit to fighting climate change, making it ultimately a symbolic treaty. Countries failed to live up to their promises to reduce their emissions. Meanwhile, the US paid $1 billion into the agreement’s fund and Americans were expected to foot the bill for increasing energy prices at home.

The new administration’s first day priorities include COVID relief for Americans: extending eviction and foreclosure moratoriums and extending a pause on student loan payments. Biden will then effectively undo any economic benefits from the latest COVID relief package and his executive actions by loosening restrictions on illegal immigration in the middle of the pandemic. He will strengthen DACA, issue a temporary freeze on deportations, stop building the wall and revoke Trump’s ‘harsh and extreme immigration enforcement.’ All of those actions will incentivize illegal immigration. A migrant caravan is already on its way. It is unconscionable to encourage a mass movement of peoples while the US is trying to reduce transmission of the virus as well as get American citizens back to work as quickly as possible.

It’s only the beginning. Biden has also floated a $15-an-hour minimum wage, which would destroy many small businesses struggling to stay alive during the pandemic and give further power to massive corporations. That plus an influx of cheap labor via immigration would be a major blow to the American working class and small business owners.

‘America’s back and it’s no longer America alone,’ Biden said in November. Except, as we’ve learned from administrations past, that usually just means ‘everyone but America’.