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      Biden trumpets democracy abroad in Post op-ed – as threats spread at home

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      Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.The president’s plan for the trip was set out in a column for the Washington Post on Saturday night, as Trump spoke to Republicans in North Carolina.Previewing meetings with “many of our closest democratic partners” and Vladimir Putin, Biden promised to “demonstrate the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age”.Critics may point out that the president would do well to face up to attacks on democracy at home. He has put Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of the matter but there are many fronts to the battle.In the states, Republicans have passed laws to restrict ballot access and to make it possible to overturn election results.On the stump, Trump continues to peddle his lie that Biden’s victory in November was the result of fraud. In Greenville on Saturday, the former president called his defeat “the crime of the century”.In Washington last month, Republicans in the Senate blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in his cause.In Biden’s own party, centrist senators stand in the way of voting rights protections.In his column for the Post, Biden tied another domestic priority – infrastructure spending, currently tied up in seemingly doomed negotiations with Republicans – to a chief foreign policy aim.“Just as it does at home,” he wrote, “honing the ability of democracies to compete and protecting our people against unforeseen threats requires us to invest in infrastructure. The world’s major democracies will be offering a high-standard alternative to China for upgrading physical, digital and health infrastructure that is more resilient and supports global development.”In North Carolina, Trump said China should pay the US and the world $10tn in reparations for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while nations should cancel debt to Beijing.Biden touted domestic successes – progress against the coronavirus and the passage of his relief and stimulus package (without a single Republican vote) – and said: “The United States must lead the world from a position of strength.”He saluted the announcement on Saturday by G7 finance ministers of a global minimum corporate tax rate. Further distancing himself from Trump, who withdrew from the Paris climate deal, he said: “We have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress that curbs the climate crisis and creates jobs by driving a global clean-energy transition.”In office, Trump attacked Nato. Biden saluted the “shared democratic values” of “the most successful alliance in world history. In Brussels, at the Nato summit, I will affirm the United States’ unwavering commitment to … ensuring our alliance is strong in the face of every challenge, including threats like cyberattacks on our critical infrastructure.”Amid proliferating such attacks, he said, it was important that “when I meet with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, it will be after high-level discussions with friends, partners and allies who see the world through the same lens as the United States”.Trump famously caused consternation among the US press corps in Helsinki in 2018, meeting Putin without aides and seeming cowed in his presence.Biden said the US and its allies were “standing united to address Russia’s challenges to European security … and there will be no doubt about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values, which we cannot separate from our interests.”Some have asked what Biden hopes to gain from meeting Putin – former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told the Guardian this week, “You meet when you have a strategy in place of how to deal with Russia and I don’t think he has one.”In the Post, Biden heralded his extension of the New Start nuclear arms treaty and responses to cyberattacks.“I will again underscore the commitment of the United States, Europe and like-minded democracies to stand up for human rights and dignity,” he wrote.“This is a defining question of our time: can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries?“I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it.” More

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      Biden bans US investment in Chinese military and tech surveillance sectors

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      Joe Biden has signed an executive order that bans American entities from investing in dozens of Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors.In a move that his administration says will expand the scope of a legally flawed Trump-era order, the US treasury will enforce and update on a “rolling basis” the new ban list of about 59 companies.It also bars buying or selling publicly traded securities in target companies, and replaces an earlier list from the defense department, senior administration officials told reporters.The order prevents US investment from supporting the Chinese military-industrial complex, as well as military, intelligence, and security research and development programs, Biden said in the order.“In addition, I find that the use of Chinese surveillance technology outside [China] and the development or use of Chinese surveillance technology to facilitate repression or serious human rights abuse constitute unusual and extraordinary threats,” Biden said.A White House fact sheet on the order said the policy would take effect for those companies listed on 2 August.Major Chinese firms included on the previous defense department list were also placed on the updated list, including Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), China Mobile Communications Group, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).SMIC is key to China’s national drive to boost its domestic chip sector.“We fully expect that in the months ahead … we’ll be adding additional companies to the new executive order’s restrictions,” one of the senior officials said.A second official told reporters that the inclusion of Chinese surveillance technology companies expanded the scope of the Trump administration’s initial order last year, which the White House argues was carelessly drafted, leaving it open to court challenges.The president has been reviewing a number of aspects of US policy toward China, and his administration had extended a deadline for implementation set by Donald Trump’s order while it crafted its new policy framework.The move is part of Biden’s broader series of steps to counter China, including reinforcing US alliances and pursuing large domestic investments to bolster American economic competitiveness, amid increasingly sour relations between the world’s two most powerful countries.Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, Kurt Campbell, said last month that a period of engagement with China had come to an end and that the dominant paradigm in bilateral ties going forward would be one of competition.Senior officials said the treasury would give guidance later on what the scope of surveillance technology means, including whether companies are facilitating “repression or serious human rights abuses”.“We really want to make sure that any future prohibitions are on legally solid ground. So, our first listings really reflect that,” a second senior administration official said.Investors would have time to “unwind” investments, a third official said.The new list provided few surprises for investors looking to see if they need to unload even more Chinese stocks and bonds.But some previously identified companies, such as Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC), which is spearheading Chinese efforts to compete with Boeing and Airbus, as well as two companies that had challenged the ban in court, Gowin Semiconductor Corp and Luokung Technology Corp, were not included.In May, a judge signed an order removing the designation on Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi, which was among the more high-profile Chinese technology companies that the Trump administration targeted for alleged ties to China’s military. More

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      Queen to meet Joe Biden at Windsor Castle on 13 June

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      The Queen will meet Joe Biden when he visits the UK for the G7 summit later this month, Buckingham Palace has announced.The head of state will welcome the US president and the first lady, Jill Biden, to Windsor Castle on Sunday 13 June. Biden is due to attend the G7 gathering in Cornwall, which will be held in Carbis Bay from 11-13 June.The Queen met Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, when he made a state visit to the UK in June 2019, in the last days of Theresa May’s premiership.The president and first lady sent their condolences to the Queen after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in April. The Bidens said they were keeping the royal family “in our hearts during this time”.Having taken up his post in the Oval Office, the coronavirus pandemic has limited opportunities for Biden to travel outside the US, so the G7 gathering will be his first foreign engagement in person.Buckingham Palace said in a short statement: “The Queen will meet the president of the United States of America and first lady Jill Biden at Windsor Castle on Sunday 13th June 2021.”There is speculation that the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will also meet the couple at some point during their visit to the UK.There have been 14 US presidents during the Queen’s 69-year reign – from Harry S Truman to Biden. Biden will become the 13th American leader to meet the monarch – the only one the Queen did not meet was Lyndon B Johnson.After attending the G7 gathering, when world leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues from climate change to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden will head to Brussels to join a Nato summit.He is also scheduled to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Switzerland on 16 June for talks on repairing relations between Washington and Moscow. More

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      US sets – and quickly suspends – tariffs on UK and others over digital taxes

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      The Biden administration announced 25% tariffs on over $2bn worth of imports from the UK and five other countries on Wednesday over their taxes on US technology companies, but immediately suspended the duties to allow time for negotiations to continue.The US trade representative, Katherine Tai, said the threatened tariffs on goods from Britain, Italy, Spain, Turkey, India and Austria had been agreed after an investigation concluded that their digital taxes discriminated against US companies.The move underscores the US threat of retaliation, first made under the Trump administration, over digital-services taxes on US-based companies including Alphabet, Apple and Facebook, that has sparked an international row over which countries should have taxing rights over some of the world’s largest companies.The US trade representative’s (USTR) office published lists of imports that would face tariffs if international tax negotiations fail to reach a solution. Goods from Britain worth $887m, including clothing, overcoats, footwear and cosmetics, would face a 25% charge as would about $386m worth of goods from Italy, including clothing, handbags and optical lenses. USTR said it would impose tariffs on goods worth $323m from Spain, $310m from Turkey, $118m from India and $65m from Austria.The potential tariffs, based on 2019 import data, aim to equal the amount of digital taxes that would be collected from US firms, a USTR official said. The news came as finance leaders from G7 countries prepare to meet in London on Friday and Saturday to discuss the state of tax negotiations, including taxation of large technology companies and a US proposal for a global minimum corporate tax. US tariffs threatened against France over its digital tax were suspended in January to allow time for negotiations.Tai said she was focused on “finding a multilateral solution” to digital taxes and other international tax issues.“Today’s actions provide time for those negotiations to continue to make progress while maintaining the option of imposing tariffs under Section 301 if warranted in the future,” Tai said.Tai faced a Wednesday deadline to announce the tariff action, or the statutory authority of the trade investigations would have lapsed.A British government spokesperson said the UK tax was aimed at ensuring tech firms pay their fair share of tax and was temporary. “Our digital services tax is reasonable, proportionate and non-discriminatory,” the spokesperson said. “It’s also temporary and we’re working positively with international partners to find a global solution to this problem.”Reuters contributed to this article More

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      Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

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      The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Donald Trump and reviving a political fight over a remote region that is home to polar bears and other wildlife – and a rich reserve of oil.The interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in office. Biden’s 20 January executive order suggested a new environmental review was needed to address possible legal flaws in a drilling program approved by the Trump administration under a 2017 law enacted by Congress.After conducting a required review, interior said it “identified defects in the underlying record of decision supporting the leases, including the lack of analysis of a reasonable range of alternatives” required under the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.The remote, 19.6m-acre refuge is home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents. Republicans and the oil industry have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities, for drilling. Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes have been trying to block it.Bill Clinton vetoed a Republican plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, when he was president, and the two parties have been fighting over the region ever since.The US bureau of land management, an interior department agency, held a lease sale for the refuge’s coastal plain on 6 January, two weeks before Biden took office.Eight days later the agency signed leases for nine tracts totaling nearly 685 sq miles. However, the issuance of the leases was not announced publicly until 19 January, former president Donald Trump’s last full day in office.Biden has opposed drilling in the region, and environmental groups have been pushing for permanent protections, which Biden demanded during the 2020 presidential campaign.The administration’s action to suspend the leases comes after officials disappointed environmental groups last week by defending a Trump administration decision to approve a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope. Critics say the action flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change.The justice department said in a court filing that opponents of the Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations. The filing defends the reviews underpinning last fall’s decision approving project plans.Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritizes sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and interior secretary Deb Haaland and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”. More

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      Texas Democrats say Republican voting bill marks ‘dark day for democracy’

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      Texas Democrats called Sunday “one of the darkest days” for American democracy, after Republicans pushed one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US to the cusp of law, rushing the bill through the state Senate in the middle of the night.Senate Bill 7 was passed on party lines around 6am, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. It was due to receive a vote in the House later on Sunday before reaching Governor Greg Abbott, who was expected to sign it.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”State representative Nicole Collier, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final bill. None signed it. She said she saw a draft around 11pm on Friday which was different than one received earlier and was asked to sign the next morning.Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America.“This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority.In an emotional appeal in support of the For the People Act, O’Rourke cited the example of civil rights legislation under President Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, in the 1960s.Calling the new federal bill “a Voting Rights Act for our day”, he said passing it would “protect the sanctity of the ballot box and make sure that no state legislature can keep us from voting. So I hope after this good fight is fought in Texas, that we direct all of our energy and all of our focus on our friends in Washington DC, who like they did in 1965 can save American democracy.”With centrist Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed to filibuster reform, that seems unlikely. More

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      ‘Real compromise’ possible on Biden infrastructure plan, key Republican says

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      Negotiations with Joe Biden over a potentially massive infrastructure investment package are inching forward even though disagreements remain over the size and scope of such legislation, Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito said on Sunday.“I think we can get to real compromise, absolutely, because we’re both still in the game,” Capito told Fox News Sunday.Capito leads a group of six Republicans in regular contact with Biden and White House aides over a bill the administration wants to move through Congress promptly.The Republicans have proposed $928bn to improve roads, bridges and other traditional infrastructure projects. Much of the funding would come from money already enacted into law for other purposes.The administration’s latest offer in negotiations is for $1.7tn and would include spending on projects that go beyond traditional infrastructure, such as homecare for the elderly.The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told ABC’s This Week: “There’s movement in the right direction, but a lot of concern … We need to make investments over and above what would have happened anyway.” He also highlighted the need for using the infrastructure bill to address climate change and indicated opposition to shifting Covid-19 relief money to infrastructure accounts.Capito said that following a White House meeting which Republicans viewed as productive, Biden aides stepped away from some ideas Republicans pushed.“We have had some back and forth with the staff that sort of pulled back a little bit but I think we’re smoothing out those edges,” said the West Virginia senator, whose state stands to benefit significantly from infrastructure investment.Republicans continued to balk at raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help finance the projects.“I’m not going to vote to overturn those,” Capito said when asked about rolling back some tax cuts enacted during the Trump administration.She also held the line against including new funding for projects that go beyond physical infrastructure, saying those could be considered in other measures.Talks are expected to continue this week even though Congress is on a break, with the Senate returning on 7 June. When lawmakers return to Washington, Biden will be under pressure from Democrats to sidestep Republicans if talks do not show signs of significant progress.Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union there needed to be a clear direction on the infrastructure bill. “The president keeps saying ‘Inaction is not an option’ and time is not unlimited here,” he said.The New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN: “I think waiting any longer for Republicans to do the right thing is a misstep … I would go forward.”The Senate could use the “reconciliation” process that requires only a simple majority to advance legislation, instead of the usual 60-vote threshold. The Senate is split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris having the power to break deadlocks.It is not clear if all Democrats would go along with such a process. More