⁍ Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would consult with America’s main allies before deciding on the future of U.S. tariffs on China.

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⁍ Biden advisers said the starting point would be to not repeat the mistakes of President Donald Trump when he slapped tariffs on European and Canadian goods.

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⁍ China has been a central foreign policy focus in the 2020 presidential campaign.

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– The US is in a trade war with China, and if Joe Biden is elected president, his first order of business will be to consult with US allies on how to handle the situation, two of his top advisers tell Reuters. “The failure of the Trump administration has been to go it alone. And that has given China an escape hatch,” says Jeffrey Prescott, a former senior foreign policy adviser in the Obama administration. Biden’s advisers say Biden won’t “lock into any premature position before we see exactly what we’re inheriting,” but “consulting with allies is going to be a central part of that.” Biden has said he’d be tougher on China than Trump, but he’s also said he’d seek “collective leverage” with US allies, such as Canada and the European Union. “You can start by not slapping tariffs on the Europeans and the Canadians and instead work with them on the trade issue,” says Brian McKeon, a former White House and Pentagon adviser in the Obama administration. “But they’ve been alienated, they’ve been insulted by President Trump, and that’s made our hand with China even weaker than it should be.” (President Trump has called Biden “weak on China.”)