Joe Biden's Foreign Policy Positions

Biden has framed supporting the U.S. technology sector as a matter of national security, even as he has sought to confront large tech companies for what he sees as unfair market practices. He has overseen the first, modest efforts in creating a federal approach to the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and taken steps to slow China’s high-tech development.

Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022, directing more than $280 billion in federal funding toward domestic production of advanced technologies and the hardware that underpins their development, such as semiconductors.
The same year, the Biden administration published an “AI Bill of Rights” identifying five principles for the responsible deployment of the technology. And in 2023, fifteen leading AI firms agreed to voluntary AI safety commitments, including a pledge to submit their cutting-edge models for government review.
In October 2023, he signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to follow a unified framework for the safe use of AI.
Biden has also joined several international efforts to govern AI, including the Hiroshima Process led by the Group of Seven (G7) and a joint declaration that seeks to ensure the technology is “human-centric, trustworthy, and responsible.” China has also signed the latter statement.
Biden has imposed several restrictions on Chinese AI development. These include export controls that restrict China’s access to semiconductors and bans on some U.S. investment in Chinese AI companies.
In February 2024, Biden signed an executive order aimed at preventing China, Russia, and other “countries of concern” from accessing Americans’ personal data. The measure follows a mandate requiring U.S. cloud service firms to reveal when Chinese companies use their data centers.
He unveiled a new National Cybersecurity Strategy in 2023 that urges U.S. companies to take responsibility for ensuring that their systems cannot be hacked and suggests that they could be held legally liable for not protecting “digital infrastructure.” The strategy also called for expanding U.S. military authorization to preempt foreign cyberattacks.
Biden has asked Congress to create legislation strengthening antitrust enforcement that can be used against large technology firms. During his presidency, the Department of Justice has pursued antitrust cases against Apple, Amazon, Google, and other big tech firms.
The Biden administration has been challenged in court over its role in asking social media companies to remove content that it considers false and misleading. Critics call these efforts a violation of the First Amendment, and the issue has gone to the Supreme Court to be settled.

China

Biden calls China the biggest national security threat to the United States, pointing to Beijing’s efforts to undermine U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific, its assertive stance on Taiwan, and its ability to conduct cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. He has moved to de-risk the United States’ economy from China’s, maintaining several of Trump’s protectionist policies while introducing a raft of his own.

Biden calls Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator,” but says that the United States should de-risk and not decouple from China. Biden’s administration has placed stringent restrictions on high-tech products that it deems critical to national security.
He has retained tariffs imposed by the Trump administration for $360 billion worth of products and introduced a raft of his own, while pressing U.S. partners in the European Union and elsewhere to increase their restrictions on Chinese tech.
He introduced sweeping export controls aimed at curtailing China’s access to semiconductors and other advanced technologies. He also banned some U.S. investment in Chinese high-tech industries. These restrictions followed major legislation that subsidized domestic manufacturing of computer chips, electric vehicle parts, and other new technologies. Firms that produce such goods in China are not eligible for U.S. subsidies.
In April 2024, he signed a bill forcing the sale of social media app TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company. The legislation will ban TikTok if a sale is not completed by 2025.
He has also maintained sanctions on Chinese individuals and entities associated with crackdowns on democracy in Hong Kong and human rights abuses against China’s minority Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. He signed bipartisan legislation requiring U.S. firms to demonstrate that their supply chains did not include forced labor by Uyghurs.
Biden has sought to counter Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific by building closer ties with U.S. allies in the region, including Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. In April 2023, the United States and the Philippines held their largest-ever joint military drills.
Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked, despite a long-standing U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward the island that China claims as its own. But after each instance, the Biden administration has walked back the comments.
In September 2023, Biden added China to the U.S. government’s list of major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries, citing its contribution to the U.S. fentanyl crisis. That same month, the Department of Justice indicted eight China-based firms for fentanyl-related crimes.
Following the first of two meetings between Biden and Xi during Biden’s presidency, the two countries agreed to pursue policies aimed at tripling global renewable energy capacity. China committed to reducing the fossil fuel methane for the first time, but not coal, the dirtiest fuel.
Biden unveiled two programs aimed at building infrastructure in lower-income countries to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which he calls a “debt and noose agreement.”

Climate Change

Biden has made addressing climate change a pillar of his presidency, calling climate change “the ultimate threat to humanity.” He has pursued an ambitious agenda, passing the largest clean energy and climate investment bill in U.S. history, expanding land and water protections, and creating a climate action–based job training program. However, he has also permitted new fossil fuel projects and overseen record-high oil and gas production.

On his first day in office, Biden signed executive orders returning the United States to the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which nearly two hundred countries agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to limit global temperature rise; revoking a presidential permit for construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline between Canada and the United States; and halting new oil and gas leases on public lands and waters. (That moratorium was later overturned by the courts.)
He has committed to an ambitious goal of achieving a carbon pollution–free power sector by 2035 and a net–zero emissions economy by 2050. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has tightened vehicle emissions standards, though it also narrowed the scope of a pending rule that would exempt existing gas-fired power plants from upcoming carbon emissions regulations.
In 2022, Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest investment in climate-related policies in U.S. history. The bill budgets roughly $370 billion for emissions-reduction efforts, including tax credits and subsidies for clean energy projects. The IRA builds on the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a $1.2 trillion law to upgrade U.S. infrastructure and spur the adoption of electric vehicles, among other measures.
His administration created the American Climate Corps, a jobs program that aims to train tens of thousands of young people in high-demand skills for careers in climate action and clean energy. The program is modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps.
In 2023, his administration reached a multistate deal to redistribute water from the Colorado River, which serves some forty million people. Under the agreement, Arizona, California, and Nevada will draw less from the river in exchange for additional federal funding.
He has approved a range of new fossil fuel projects, including an $8 billion oil drilling project in northern Alaska. However, he also announced restrictions on new oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres (5.3 million hectares) of an Alaskan federal petroleum reserve. Under his administration, oil and gas production has continued to grow to historic highs, with the United States becoming the world’s largest crude oil producer.
As part of the IIJA, the Biden administration created the Civil Nuclear Credit Program to invest $6 billion in existing nuclear energy facilities. In March 2024, his administration announced that it will lend $1.5 billion to restart a shuttered nuclear plant in Michigan, the nation’s first such recommissioning.
The administration temporarily paused approvals for new export facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG), a move it says is in line with its climate goals.

Defense and NATO

Biden is a strong advocate for multilateral cooperation and a longtime champion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in 2022, has prompted NATO to reinforce its deterrence and defense posture against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. And, in the face of growing great-power competition with China, the Biden administration has sought to shore up U.S. diplomatic and military relations with allies in the Indo-Pacific.

His administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy [PDF] broadly maintained the Trump administration’s focus on great-power competition with China and Russia.
Biden has reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO, which he has called “the single most important military alliance in the history of the world.” Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he supported NATO enlargement by pushing for approval of Finland and Sweden’s accession bids. (Finland and Sweden joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, respectively.)
The Biden administration also formulated an updated Indo-Pacific Strategy [PDF], which pledges to support “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” To that end, Biden has inked a new defense pact with Papua New Guinea and advanced an existing defense agreement with the Philippines. His administration has also deepened security cooperation with Japan and South Korea, and it held the inaugural in-person summit of the so-called Quad—an alliance comprising the United States, Australia, India, and Japan—which aims to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.
Biden also announced a new trilateral pact with Australia and the United Kingdom, known as AUKUS, that seeks to bolster the countries’ allied deterrence and defense capabilities against China, including by supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
The omnibus defense spending bill for fiscal year 2024 authorizes $886 billion for the Pentagon and extends federal authorities’ spying powers, among other measures.
Biden has made defending democracy a pillar of his presidency, warning against the rising tide of populism domestically and globally and saying that modern geopolitics is a “battle between democracy and autocracy.” He frames helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia and continuing to back Taiwan as part of this effort.
The administration’s new Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa [PDF] emphasizes democracy protection, and in 2022, a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit produced commitments to increase U.S. military aid and training to African governments.
Long a skeptic of what he once called “the forever wars” in Afghanistan and the Middle East, Biden withdrew all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021 as part of an earlier deal struck by Trump.
Biden has announced his intention to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his term, though his efforts have been impeded by acts of Congress that prohibit federal funds from being used to transfer detainees to the United States.

He has authorized use of the Defense Production Act, which allows the U.S. government to intervene in strategic industries, to “rebuild and expand” the United States’ defense industrial base. Impacted sectors include those related to hypersonic weaponry, critical tech and energy supply chains, and circuit boards used in missile and radar systems.

Fiscal Policy and Debt

The Biden administration says its “Bidenomics” economic policy has three pillars: making massive public investments in energy and infrastructure, growing the middle class, and challenging monopolistic consolidation. Biden has pledged to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans in a bid to reduce record deficits.

Biden has signed legislation authorizing trillions of dollars in new public spending. In 2021, the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the largest infrastructure spending bill in decades, authorized $1.2 trillion in spending toward U.S. roads, railways, airports, and other infrastructure. Additional subsidies for semiconductor and climate investments have reached more than $800 billion.
Nonpartisan watchdogs expect that Biden’s spending programs will increase the growing federal deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. The deficit is now $1.7 trillion, and the national debt has climbed past $30 trillion, or more than 100 percent of U.S. economic output.
Biden says raising taxes on the richest Americans would “wipe out” the debt. He opposes extending tax cuts that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act granted to Americans with yearly household incomes over $400,000. He has also proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent and implementing a wealth tax that would impose a 25 percent levy on individuals with more than $100 million worth of total assets.
In 2021, Biden brokered a global agreement to tax corporations at a minimum of 15 percent, though it is yet to be implemented. One year later, he introduced a 15 percent corporate minimum tax on U.S. companies with annual income over $1 billion.
Biden has made antitrust policy a priority, challenging alleged monopolies in the aviation, energy, and technology sectors. In 2022, Biden appointees leading the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice recorded the most challenges to proposed mergers since the United States began requiring premerger reviews in 1976.

Global Health and Pandemic Prevention

When Biden took office, the death toll from COVID-19 had surpassed four hundred thousand people. As president, he has expanded access to testing and treatment for COVID-19, launched a nationwide vaccination campaign against the disease, and signed a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. His administration also rejoined the World Health Organization, which Trump had threatened to withdraw the United States from, and it revoked a controversial policy that blocked U.S. foreign aid from funding any organizations that promote or perform abortions.

Biden criticized China for a lack of transparency during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and accused Beijing of withholding “critical information” on the novel coronavirus’s origins. In March 2023, he ordered the release of U.S. intelligence materials on the potential link between the virus’s initial outbreak and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The following month, he ended the U.S. national emergency in response to the pandemic, three years after it was declared.
His national pandemic strategy [PDF] focused on quickly ramping up vaccine production, protecting essential workers, and expanding access to testing and treatment. In March 2021, Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, which provided direct payments of up to $1,400 per person, a $300 federal boost to weekly jobless benefits, and $350 billion to local governments, states, and territories and tribes, among other measures.
His administration pursued an aggressive COVID-19 vaccination policy that included free vaccine access and a nationwide vaccine mandate that would have affected most large employers. (The Supreme Court struck down the mandate.) His administration also directed billions of dollars to GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private partnership that has provided billions of doses to lower-income countries.
In October 2022, he unveiled a new national biodefense strategy [PDF] that aims to help the United States better prepare for large-scale biological or viral threats that could emerge in the future. The strategy led to the creation of the White House’s Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, tasked with coordinating, leading, and implementing pandemic preparedness efforts.
Like Trump, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to help manage the pandemic. His administration used the law to direct the private sector to increase critical medical supplies, expand access to testing, and spur vaccine production.
He issued an executive order retracting Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization, to which the United States is one of the largest donors.
Biden has sought to address the U.S. opioid epidemic, including by declaring synthetic opioid trafficking a national emergency; sanctioning firms and individuals in China, a critical node in the drug’s supply chain; and pushing China and Mexico to do more to cut the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
Biden rescinded the so-called Mexico City policy blocking abortion-related programs from receiving U.S. foreign aid, saying that it undermined U.S. efforts to support women’s health. He also restored funding to the UN Population Fund that Trump had revoked over the fund’s alleged support for forced abortions in China.

Immigration

Biden campaigned on overturning nearly all of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. He supports comprehensive immigration reform; to this end, he has worked to expand some asylum and refugee protections, increase the capacity of some guest worker visa programs, and address the root causes of migration from Central America. However, he has also restricted asylum access more broadly amid a historic surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On his first day in office, Biden sent to Congress his own proposal for wide-ranging immigration reform. Among other provisions, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 sought to establish an eight-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, reduce visa backlogs, and create new systems for asylum seekers and other migrants to legally apply for protection from outside the United States. The bill did not advance in Congress.
He suspended construction of the wall at the southern U.S. border and rescinded the national emergency declaration that allowed Trump to divert funds to build out the barrier. But Biden has also faced criticism for his administration’s use of border patrol facilities to house migrants.
With migration reaching record levels, Biden has faced pushback from several Republican-led border states. Most notably, the administration sued Texas to stop a state law that the White House says improperly overrides federal immigration policy by allowing local law enforcement to arrest migrants who cross the border illegally.
Under Biden, the overall number of deportations carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surpassed 142,000 in fiscal year 2023, compared to just over 59,000 in fiscal year 2021. Detentions have also risen to more than 273,000, up from slightly over 211,400 in fiscal year 2021.
Biden has pledged to rebuild the U.S. refugee resettlement program after Trump made large cuts. Biden raised the annual admissions cap to 125,000 for fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024, up from a record low of eighteen thousand in 2020. However, actual refugee admissions only reached roughly sixty thousand in fiscal year 2023. The administration also created new parole programs that allow additional Afghan and Ukrainian refugees to come to the United States.
Biden ended Trump’s 2019 “Remain in Mexico” program that required most asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases were processed in U.S. immigration courts. Court decisions also forced Biden to continue implementing Title 42, which allowed border officials to expel migrants on public health grounds, until 2023.
He has sought to restore asylum access, including by ending daily limits on asylum applications and restoring protections to victims of domestic and gang violence.
However, his administration unveiled a new policy in 2023 that allows the government to deny asylum to migrants who did not previously apply for it in a third country and to those who cross the border illegally. This approach includes new screening centers in several Latin American countries.
In 2024, his administration also issued an order temporarily blocking people who illegally cross the border from seeking asylum once the number of daily crossings exceeds a certain threshold. A separate order also expanded green card access for certain undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens.
He expanded and renewed temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of eligible nationals of several countries, including Afghanistan, Cameroon, and Ukraine. He has also deferred the removal of most Palestinian migrants from the country for eighteen months amid Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.
He expanded the capacity of some guest worker visa programs in response to the increasing demand for temporary workers. In October 2023, his administration released a proposal to modernize the H1B visa program for workers with specialized knowledge, including by tightening some eligibility criteria.
He has appealed a federal ruling declaring unlawful the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, an Obama-era program that provides deportation relief and work permits to undocumented migrants brought to the United States illegally as children.
He reinstated the Central American Minors program, which has allowed thousands of children from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to gain refugee status or temporary legal residence before traveling to the southern U.S. border. (Trump discontinued the program in 2017.) In 2021, the Biden administration launched a four-year, $4 billion initiative to address the drivers of Central American migration.

Middle East

Throughout his presidency, Biden has been deeply engaged in shaping U.S. policy towards the Middle East. He began his term seeking to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but renewed conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has since preoccupied his administration’s efforts in the region.

Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout his political career, calling himself a “Zionist.” Following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel in October 2023, Biden has backed Israel’s right to defend itself and pressed for an additional $15 billion in military aid to the country. He has called his support for Israel “rock solid and unwavering.”
However, he has also sought to restrain Israel’s military response amid its war against Hamas, calling Israel’s actions “over the top” due to mounting civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip. His administration has repeatedly sought to negotiate cease-fire deals, most recently in June 2024, and hostage exchanges between Israel and Hamas.
Biden says a two-state solution is the only way to permanently end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has previously called on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel, though his efforts on this front have stalled amid the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden calls Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories “inconsistent with international law.” In February 2024, he signed an executive order that paved the way for the U.S. government to impose its first sanctions against Israeli individuals involved in attacks on Palestinians; the day Biden signed the order, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned four Israeli settlers accused of violence in the West Bank.
Biden began his term seeking a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In exchange, Riyadh had asked for formalized U.S. security guarantees, cooperation on a civilian nuclear program, and Israeli concessions toward Palestinians, but negotiations came to a standstill after the October 7 Hamas attack.
As a candidate in 2020, Biden had pledged to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” for its human rights violations, including its role in the war in Yemen. However, the Biden administration continues to describe Saudi Arabia as a “strong partner,” and Washington remains Riyadh’s largest supplier of arms.
In partnership with the United Kingdom, he ordered a military campaign against the Iran-backed, Yemen-based Houthi rebel group, which says it is targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea to support Hamas in its war with Israel. The Biden administration says the strikes will go on “as long as they need to.”
Biden has criticized Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and pursued talks with Tehran about resuming the agreement. But progress has been hindered and potentially halted over Iran’s support of Hamas, the Houthis, and other groups antagonistic to the United States. After Iran-aligned forces killed three U.S. service members in Jordan in January 2024, U.S. military forces struck more than eighty-five Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria.

Russia–Ukraine

Biden says that the United States will back Ukraine’s defensive efforts against Russia for “as long as it takes” to counter the threat that a Russian victory would pose to the rest of Europe. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Biden’s administration has directed tens of billions of dollars in financial assistance to Ukraine, imposed sanctions on Russian entities and individuals, and enlarged the U.S. military presence in Europe.

Biden has strongly condemned Russia’s invasion, calling it “an unprovoked and unjustified attack” and pledging to support Kyiv indefinitely. Since 2022, the United States has provided Ukraine with about $75 billion in assistance, including financial, humanitarian, and military support. In April 2024, Biden signed into law a bill that provides an additional $61 billion in new aid to Ukraine.
His administration has worked closely with Western allies to impose sweeping sanctions, export controls, and other penalties on Russian entities and individuals, including the Russian private military company Wagner Group. The measures have focused on isolating Russia from the global financial system, limiting its energy exports, and hampering its military capabilities.
Biden says the United States will boost its long-term military presence in Europe in response to the threat posed by Russia, including by building a new permanent U.S. Army headquarters in Poland. However, he has ruled out sending U.S. troops directly to Ukraine, which he says would risk a significant escalation of the conflict.
Prior to the outbreak of war, Biden pursued several diplomatic avenues with Russia. He and Russian President Putin agreed to extend the New START treaty, which limits the U.S. and Russian arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons. The two leaders have met once during Biden’s presidency, in 2021, with little direct contact since.
Biden has faced criticism from Trump and other lawmakers for his son Hunter’s past affiliation with a Ukrainian energy company while Biden was vice president. Biden has said Hunter’s position had no connection to U.S.-Ukraine policy. Trump’s 2019 impeachment centered on his alleged efforts to use military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden.

Trade

After championing free trade for decades as a U.S. senator and vice president, Biden has used his presidency to bring back industrial policy, applying new guardrails on trade that he says promote U.S. manufacturing, counter China’s economic rise, and address worsening climate change.

He has not rejoined the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement from which Trump withdrew. Biden has instead sought to negotiate a successor deal that includes cooperation on supply chains but does not eliminate tariffs or increase access to the U.S. market.
Biden has sought to develop what he calls “foreign policy for the middle class.” He says that previous trade deals focused too much on boosting corporate profits while exposing U.S. workers to unfair competition. He says strengthening investment in U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure is a more effective way of increasing the country’s economic competitiveness.
He has mobilized the federal government to support strategic domestic industries, an effort known as industrial policy. In 2022, he signed the CHIPS and Science Act directing hundreds of billions of dollars toward U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
That same year, he signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained an additional $369 billion in federal grants, loans, and tax incentives to “help build a clean energy economy.” To obtain access to CHIPS and IRA funding, companies must agree to limit operations in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
Biden has maintained some $360 billion in tariffs on China that were implemented by Trump while also introducing several of his own. He has also imposed a slew of new restrictions aimed at curtailing Beijing’s access to advanced technologies, and he has pushed U.S. allies, including major semiconductor suppliers Japan and the Netherlands, to implement similar restrictions.
Biden signed an executive order strengthening so-called Buy American laws, which require the federal government to secure goods and services from U.S. firms. He also signed an executive order to replace all government vehicles with U.S.-made electric vehicles by 2035.