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Brexit is done. Yet there remain more questions than answers. A new relationship has been established, but the functioning of the two new treaties in practice remains uncertain. The EU remains a contentious issue in UK politics and will continue to hang over political debates, especially in Scotland. The UK and EU have to define a new relationship with a political interest in seeing the other fail. Ultimately, what Brexit is likely to mean is more Brexit, both in terms of ongoing UK-EU conflicts and in deep divisions over the EU in UK politics.

This essay examines three levels of challenges the new U.S. President Joe Biden must confront: those in the global arena, those that are pertinent for transatlantic relations and those which relate specifically to German-American relations. Plotting steps in all three arenas will require coordination with partners and engagement with competitors. That triangle requires understanding how the three levels overlap, where they can complement each other and where they will require finding common ground.

The EU and the U.S. are key trading partners for each other. However, there is still no transatlantic free trade agreement. Persistent threats from President Trump make the situation more complicated. On the surface, customs issues in particular play a role. In fact, it is about fundamental geopolitical and security issues – it’s about power in the international economy, energy and defense. This essay highlights the connections and solutions that exist to negotiate a transatlantic free trade agreement. It displays a zero-sum-view of U.S. President Trump.

NAFTA is most often judged by economic standards. However, it contains security implications for Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. on different levels. The U.S. is the major power which defined the terms of the agreement. Security agreements tend to be bilateral, rather than trilateral. NAFTA has no institutionalised infrastructure that is comparable to the political system of the EU. Liberalism and neorealism offer explanations for the design of this free trade agreement; however, this paper finds more arguments for the neorealist explanation.

The concept of smart power, which Joseph S. Nye defined as a combination of soft and hard power, was embraced by the Obama administration and became an integral part of its foreign policy strategy. With the administration of Donald Trump, we are witnessing a shift away from soft power toward hard power, which indicates a departure from the smart power strategy of his predecessor. This essay raises the issue of the recent decrease of American soft power and concludes that there is a correlation between this decline and the retreat of the U.S. from its global leadership role.