A series of executive orders already prepared by Joe Biden's administration will allow the United States to turn the page on Donald Trump's four years in office.
Pandemic, environment, society, climate, economy. The America that new United States president Joe Biden will find on Wednesday 20 January is markedly different from the one of four years ago. Regardless of anyone's political views, it is unquestionably a more divided, more inward-looking, more isolated America on the international stage.
That is why the Democratic president has decided not to waste time. As soon as he is installed at the White House, he will sign a series of executive orders. Because, as his future chief of staff Ron Klain explained, "we have ongoing crises that require urgent action. President Biden will act not only to repair the most serious damage done by the Donald Trump administration, but also to allow the country to move forward."
One of the first steps will be to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement. The process initiated by the American billionaire in June 2017 took effect three years later, in November 2020. During the election campaign, however, Biden had already promised to reverse course. A relatively brief technical period (one month) will then be required for the Unfccc, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to make it operational.
But the main emergency for the new administration will be the health crisis. Biden inherits a nation on the verge of 400,000 deaths from Covid-19, and more than one million new cases every week. The economy, moreover, has been severely hit by the crisis, with the loss of around ten million jobs.
For this reason Biden has put forward a $1.9 trillion recovery plan. It consists of cheques for families, funds for the reopening of schools, to accelerate testing and vaccines, liquidity for small businesses, and also food aid for people in greatest difficulty. The moratorium on evictions and foreclosures for those unable to keep up with their mortgage repayments will also be extended.
With regard to migrants, the ban on entry into United States territory imposed on certain majority-Muslim nations — which had sparked controversy and divided the United States in 2017, also triggering a lengthy legal battle — will be lifted.
In general, the choice to use executive orders as a tool will help the head of state avoid having to go through Congress — and in particular the Senate, whose schedule could be especially complicated, given that a great deal of time may be taken up by the second impeachment procedure voted against Donald Trump, who is suspected of having incited the rioters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January.
