Did President Joe Biden(term of 2021-2025) continue the US-EU trade war that President Trump started in his first term?

1. De‑escalation on the big headline fights

Within months of taking office the Biden administration negotiated a five‑year suspension of Airbus‑Boeing tariffs with the EU and formed a working group to seek a permanent solution to that long‑running WTO dispute, a clear signal of truce compared with the prior administration’s confrontational posture ^[1]; similarly the Biden team replaced broad steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU with tariff‑rate quotas (TRQs) and had the EU lift retaliatory tariffs on items such as whiskey and motorcycles—moves framed publicly as rebuilding alliances rather than continuing tariff warfare ^{[2] [3]}.

2. New frameworks and cooperation, not a return to free trade orthodoxy

Rather than returning to pre‑Trump free‑trade agendas, Biden favored institutionalized cooperation—launching the US‑EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) to manage emerging tech and trade tensions and negotiating sectoral arrangements like the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum with environmental and market‑access components—showing a shift from blunt unilateralism toward managed, rules‑based coordination with the EU ^{[5] [6] [7]}.

3. Continuities with Trump: protectionist tools and industrial policy remain

Despite the truce on specific disputes, Biden retained substantial protectionist tools and prioritized industrial policy—converting some tariffs into quotas instead of full removals, maintaining restrictions on non‑EU steel and aluminum, and pursuing Buy America‑style measures and supply‑chain reshoring to protect U.S. manufacturing—measures that critics say echo Trump’s "America First" instincts, even if executed with more diplomacy ^{[8] [3] [4] [9]}.

4. Economic and political drivers behind Biden’s approach

Biden’s hybrid approach reflects competing goals: repairing alliances and building coalitions on China and technology issues while responding to domestic political pressure to protect workers and strategic industries; official USTR documents and the administration’s trade agenda emphasize worker‑centered trade, climate and supply‑chain resilience rather than pure liberalization, explaining why tariffs and targeted restrictions persisted even as transatlantic disputes were smoothed ^{[10] [7] [6]}.

5. Critics, allies and implicit agendas

European officials and many trade analysts welcomed the de‑escalation yet warned that U.S. industrial subsidies like the Inflation Reduction Act and tightened investment screening could still distort competition—European reactions framed Biden as "Trump with manners" when policies served U.S. industrial priorities—while domestic labor and climate constituencies pressed the White House to keep protective measures, revealing an implicit agenda to marry geopolitical coordination with strategic economic nationalism ^{[4] [11] [7]}.

6. Verdict and limits of the record

On balance, Biden did not continue Trump’s trade war against the EU in form or tone; he negotiated suspensions, quotas and cooperative mechanisms that reduced bilateral tit‑for‑tat escalation ^{[1] [2] [3]}. However, he preserved and repurposed protectionist instruments and industrial policies that maintain barriers and leverage—so while the worst aspects of a "trade war" were dialed down, the underlying trend toward managed trade and strategic protectionism persisted ^{[9] [6]}. This assessment relies on the cited reporting; if readers seek granular data on tariff lines or the full text of TRQ proclamations, those specifics are beyond the provided sources and would require direct access to USTR proclamations and WTO filings.