Joe Biden

Saturday March 20, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 20, 2021

Biden Takes First Jab At Vaccine Diplomacy, Sharing Doses With Mexico, Canada

Under pressure to share AstraZeneca vaccine doses not yet being used to inoculate Americans, the Biden administration is finalizing plans to loan millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Mexico and Canada. It’s a first foray into vaccine diplomacy for the Biden administration, weeks after global competitors China and Russia began using vaccine doses to exert influence.

March 13, 2021

The U.S. government has contracts to buy hundreds of millions more vaccine dosesthan there are people living here, but with most of those doses not yet delivered and Americans still struggling to get vaccination appointments, the Biden administration has so far focused on making sure Americans get vaccinated first. 

While AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been approved for use in many other countries, including Mexico and Canada, it still hasn’t been given emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So, the White House announced it is working through the technicalities to loan 2.5 million doses to Mexico and 1.5 million doses to Canada from its stockpile of 7 million doses. 

“This action will allow our neighbors to meet a critical vaccination need in their countries, providing more protection immediately across the North American continent,” said Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus coordinator.

February 9, 2017

While the United States has vaccinated more than 12% of its population according to Johns Hopkins data, Canada has vaccinated only 1.7% of its population and Mexico only 0.5%.

Zients said the loans will be repaid through dose deliveries from AstraZeneca later in the year. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said many countries have asked to borrow from the stockpile, but said it’s not yet clear whether other requests may be granted.

After briefly pausing vaccinations with AstraZeneca in Europe due to concerns about blood clots developing, health officials there this week announced they believe the vaccine to be safe and effective and resumed administering the vaccine. (NPR) 

 

Saturday March 13, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 13, 2021

Where should U.S. vaccine production go next? Canada and Mexico, says one lawmaker

News Tuesday that the United States is racing ahead to mass-vaccination against COVID-19 months faster than expected is a big deal not only for Americans but could also have implications for Canada, which has so far been prevented from importing U.S.-made vaccines.

January 26, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted Tuesday that the U.S. should have enough vaccines for all Americans by the end of May, two months sooner than the previously announced target.

So, where will massive American production volumes shift next?

One U.S. lawmaker’s suggestion: Canada and Mexico. 

Vicente Gonzalez, a member of the House of Representatives, says the U.S. must make it a priority to ship vaccines across the border to its neighbours once Americans are inoculated.

The Texas Democrat says he’s looking forward to when the U.S. can ease up on an export ban that has prevented foreign shipments of doses produced in the country.

June 4, 2020

Biden’s administration, like the Trump administration before it, has blocked exports and rebuffed requests from Canada and Mexico for supplies.

“The borders are closed in my district,” the Democratic lawmaker, whose district sits along part of the U.S.-Mexico border, told CNN Monday.

“Mexican nationals with visas who normally travel here or own second homes [or] come and do business here are not allowed across the border right now.

“So, we definitely need to immunize our friends across the border at some point, once we’re finished doing it here in our country.”

November 12, 2018

Gonzalez said the U.S. will only truly recover from the pandemic when its neighbours are safe, too.

“I think we have five vaccines for every American, so we certainly have some extra vaccines that we could share with other countries — especially somebody like Mexico or Canada, who we do a lot of business with … where a lot of commerce and tourism flow on a regular basis,” Gonzalez said in the interview. 

“So we don’t live in this world, isolated. It’s a global community, and certainly, North America is a very tight-knit community. We have relatives on both sides of the border, we do business on both sides of the border, whether it’s Canada or Mexico.”

Gonzalez’s comments point to a question that will only intensify over the coming months about what happens to the big production capacity within the United States once export bans are lifted on plants such as Pfizer’s in Michigan and Moderna’s in New England.

The United States has vaccinated residents at quadruple the rate of Canada. Biden has said in the past that there should be enough vaccines for all Americans by the end of July before revising that to late May on Tuesday.

That puts the U.S. schedule several months ahead of Canada’s. (CBC)

Sketch of America saving Canada’s bacon

 

Wednesday March 3, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 3, 2021

Biden retreats from vow to make pariah of Saudis

October 25, 2018

As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised to make a pariah out of Saudi Arabia over the 2018 killing of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. But when it came time to actually punish Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Biden’s perception of America’s strategic interests prevailed.

The Biden administration made clear Friday it would forgo sanctions or any other major penalty against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Khashoggi killing, even after a U.S. intelligence report concluded the prince ordered it.

The decision highlights how the real-time decisions of diplomacy often collide with the righteousness of the moral high ground. And nowhere is this conundrum more stark than in the United States’ complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia — the world’s oil giant, a U.S. arms customer and a counterbalance to Iran in the Middle East.

“It is undeniable that Saudi Arabia is a hugely influential country in the Arab world,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday when asked about Biden’s retreat from his promise to isolate the Saudis over the killing. 

Ultimately, Biden administration officials said, U.S. interests in maintaining relations with Saudi Arabia forbid making a pariah of a young prince who may go on to rule the kingdom for decades. That stands in stark contrast to Biden’s campaign promise to make the kingdom “pay the price” for human rights abuses and “make them in fact the pariah that they are.”

“We’ve talked about this in terms of a recalibration. It’s not a rupture,” Price said of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. 

October 12, 2018

But what the Biden administration is calling a “recalibration” of former President Donald Trump’s warm relationship with Saudi royals looks a lot like the normal U.S. stand before Trump: chiding on human rights abuses in the kingdom, but not allowing those concerns to interfere with relations with Saudi Arabia. 

In recent days, Biden officials have responded to intense criticism of the administration’s failure to sanction the prince by pointing to U.S. measures targeting his lower-ranking associates. 

Those include steps against the prince’s “Tiger squad,” which allegedly has sought out dissidents abroad, and sanctions and visa restrictions upon Saudi officials who directly participated in Khashoggi’s slaying and dismemberment.

The language itself has softened, with Biden officials referring to Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner rather than pariah.

Watching it all, Trump suggested over the weekend that Biden’s stand on Saudi Arabia’s prince wasn’t so different from his after all. Khashoggi’s killing by Mohammed bin Salman’s security and intelligence officials was bad, Trump told Fox News, “but we have to look at it as an overall” situation. Biden seems to be “viewing it maybe in a similar fashion, very interesting, actually.”

August 8, 2018

Mohammed bin Salman, 35, has consolidated power in Saudi Arabia since his father, Salman, now 85 and ailing, became king in 2015. The prince soon after launched a war in neighboring Yemen that has deepened hunger and poverty in that country; opened an economic blockade of Qatar that only recently ended; and invited the leader of another Arab country, Lebanon, for a visit and without warning detained him.

The prince has silenced civil society at home, imprisoning writers, clerics, businesspeople and women’s rights advocates, detaining and allegedly torturing fellow royals, and allegedly forming a squad charged with abducting or luring exiles back to the kingdom to face further punishment. 

Khashoggi had fled Saudi Arabia and was deepening his criticism of the prince in columns written for The Washington Post. When Khashoggi scheduled an Oct. 2, 2018, appointment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up paperwork needed for his wedding, Saudi security and intelligence officials were waiting for him there. So was Saudi security’s forensics chief, known for his techniques for rapid dissections. Khashoggi’s remains have never been found. (AP) 

 

Tuesday February 23, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 23, 2021

Biden to meet virtually with Trudeau on Tuesday in first meeting with a foreign leader

U.S. President Joe Biden’s first official meeting with a foreign head of government will be a virtual encounter on Tuesday with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

January 26, 2021

“The president will highlight the strong and deep partnership between the United States and Canada as neighbours, friends and NATO allies,” the White House said in a statement on Saturday.

The Prime Minister’s Office said meeting agenda items include the COVID-19 pandemic, economic recovery, job creation, maintaining cross-border supply chains, climate change, energy, defence and security, and diversity and inclusion.

The U.S. president’s Keystone XL pipeline cancellation is expected to come up but will not likely be a main focus of the meeting. 

June 24, 2020

The detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China is also expected to be raised by Trudeau, according to a source who spoke to CBC News confidentially.

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Biden has already had a series of phone conversations with a number of leaders, starting with Trudeau, shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

June 22, 2019

The new administration has signalled its desire to improve relationships with traditional American partners by scheduling his first calls, and now a first meeting, with the country’s democratic allies. 

Conversely, Biden has de-emphasized relationships with non-democratic figures that had been cozier during the Trump era.

The White House has said Biden would not deal directly with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman because the crown prince is not officially the country’s ruler. It also said Biden planned to speak with allied leaders before figures such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, though he did eventually talk to Putin in the second week of his presidency. (CBC) 

 

Thursday February 11, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 11, 2021

White House says Biden is too busy to pay much attention to Trump impeachment trial

The historic second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump was already draining the oxygen from the air of political Washington on Monday, one day before it began. But one important viewer is making a point of saying he won’t tune in.

November 14, 2020

President Biden will be too busy this week to catch much of his predecessor’s Senate impeachment trial, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. He’ll be focused on pushing his pandemic relief package, visiting the National Institutes of Health, touching base at the Pentagon and tackling his other duties at a time of crisis, the White House says.

On Monday, Biden declined to comment on what is arguably a central question facing the country — how and whether his predecessor should be held to account for his role in encouraging a mob that sought to overturn his election loss.

“Let the Senate work that out,” Biden replied when asked by reporters.

“He has a full schedule this week,” Psaki said when asked about Biden’s plans as the Senate trial unfolds amid what is likely to be bitter partisan acrimony. “I don’t expect that he’s going to be, you know, posturing or commenting on this through the course of the week.”

February 4, 2021

But it is unclear if the White House will, or even can, be as removed from this political drama, as Biden and his aides suggest. No sitting president has ever had to contend with the impeachment trial of his predecessor unfolding during his own presidency, let alone in the crucial opening weeks that often present the best opening for getting things done.

Besides siphoning off the attention of the public and lawmakers, the trial, which is expected to last until at least the middle of next week, could delay Biden’s agenda and the confirmation of top appointees. Vice President Harris could be summoned to cast tiebreaking votes on procedural issues.

More broadly, Biden has spoken for two years of “restoring the soul of America” and moving beyond the Trump era. Yet in making it clear he will distance himself from the Senate trial, Biden is removing himself from the highest-profile effort to grapple with Trump’s legacy.

“The closest comparison, but it’s not direct, is Ford trying to figure out what to do with Nixon,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian who has written about impeachment. “Ford needed to find a way to turn the page.”

November 17, 2020

Then-president Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, ensuring he would not face criminal charges for the wrongdoing of the Watergate scandal, arguing that the country needed to move past a bitterly divisive period.

“I understand why Gerald Ford did what he did. But I think there was a cost to turning the corner as quickly as he did,” said Naftali, the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “And I worry that, through an understandable concern about the pandemic, Joe Biden may be turning the corner too quickly.”

Trump was impeached for allegedly inciting an insurrection, a charge that stems from his encouragement of a mob that assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, forcing Congress to suspend the process of tallying the electoral college votes that showed Biden to be the victor in the November election.

Biden has said his focus is on tackling the crises facing the country, including the pandemic and the economic collapse, which are disrupting — and sometimes ending — the lives of millions of Americans. (Washington Post)