This fitful and imperfect progress abruptly stalled with the election of President Donald Trump. He issued repeated executive orders attempting to tighten “Buy American” rules as part of his larger policy of waging a trade war against the rest of the world. For a brief while, it seemed that Trump’s self-harming trade policy might discredit the protectionist ideology that animated it. But no. Biden promises not only to continue the policy, but now to expand it. Biden talked a lot in his speech on Wednesday night about the challenge from China, a real and urgent concern. But China, which never signed any agreements to open its procurement market, has a very different kind of economy from the nations with rule-of-law market economies that have signed the World Trade Organization’s agreements on procurement. Excluding China from the benefits of those agreements is more than fair. But Biden seems to want to undo 40 years of market opening that aimed to level the field for U.S. exporters abroad—and to secure better value for U.S. taxpayers’ procurement dollars at home. Biden’s “Buy American” policy and rhetoric are an abdication of American leadership on trade. It’s a waste, it’s a shame, it’s wrong—and at the moment, there seems to be no elected figure in either party willing to stand against it.