That convergence is among several instances in which — for all their vast differences in policy, motivation and tone — the new president finds himself on common ground with the old.
Biden so far has kept many of the protectionist tariffs that he inherited, continuing the trade limitations that Trump had placed on Chinese imports. He has kept in place some of the Trump-era border policies that advocates have pressed him to overturn, such as pandemic travel restrictions at the Mexico and Canada borders that the Biden administration extended Friday.
And while Biden displays a belief in diplomacy and working with like-minded countries on priorities like climate change and the coronavirus, the longtime senator who supported the Iraq War in 2002 and initial actions in Afghanistan has shown an increasing aversion to an interventionist foreign policy…
“The bigger thing that’s consistent between Obama’s second term to Trump to now how Biden has started out is: ‘We take care of our own,’ ” said Brian Katulis, a foreign policy expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress who has referred to the latest turn in foreign policy as “the gated community mind-set.”
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