Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign told Fox News he would sign executive orders on his first day in office to reverse four policies enacted by President Donald Trump. Biden’s campaign team revealed the moves after multiple U.S. media outlets called the 2020 election on his behalf, but as Trump has continued to contest the election results.
Fox News reported the Biden campaign team told the news outlet he plans to take executive actions to bring the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Accord, and rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO), which Trump withdrew from after its handling of information from China about the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Biden also reportedly plans to restart the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and end a Trump-era travel ban targeting majority Muslim nations listed as terror-haven countries on his first day
Biden’s plan to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord comes after Trump, in 2017, announced his intent to withdraw from the deal and formally completed the withdrawal process this month. In a 2017 statement, Trump criticized the climate agreement which he said would cost the U.S. as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 and about 6.5 million jobs in key industries by 2040. Trump also said the deal advantages China by allowing it to continue to increase its carbon emissions while limiting the U.S.
China “will be able to increase these emissions by a staggering number of years — 13. They can do whatever they want for 13 years. Not us,” Trump said in 2017.
On Biden’s campaign website, along with announcing his plan to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, states Biden would secure commitments from other countries on their climate policies “to make sure other nations can’t undercut us economically as we meet our own commitments” adding, “This includes pressuring China—the world’s largest emitter of carbon—to stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing their pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars of dirty fossil-fuel energy projects through their Belt and Road Initiative.”
Trump ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the WHO in May after criticizing the U.N. organization’s close ties with China and laying out a timeline of apparent delays in its early response to the virus outbreak, which began in Wuhan, China.
The Biden campaign team also reportedly told Fox News that Biden will have the U.S. rejoin the WHO on his first day as president.
Biden’s website campaign also states “Biden will remove the uncertainty for Dreamers by reinstating the DACA program.”
The DACA program aims to defer deportations for the children of illegal immigrants, who were brought to U.S. as children, and allow them to apply for work permits in the U.S.
At various points in 2017, Trump ordered travel bans on a number of countries he deemed terrorist havens, before arriving at a revised travel ban barring travel to the US from six countries. Those countries included North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad. With the exception of North Korea, the countries included in the ban are majority Muslim. Trump defended the ban as a means of stopping terrorism but the move was criticized as a means of targeting Muslims. In December of 2017, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the travel ban to proceed.
Biden’s campaign website states, “The Trump Administration’s anti-Muslim bias hurts our economy, betrays our values, and can serve as a powerful terrorist recruiting tool. Prohibiting Muslims from entering the country is morally wrong, and there is no intelligence or evidence that suggests it makes our nation more secure. It is yet another abuse of power by the Trump Administration designed to target primarily black and brown immigrants. Biden will immediately rescind the ‘Muslim bans.’”
Biden’s campaign does not state specifically when he will reinstate DACA or end the “Muslim Bans” but his team included those moves as part of his day one plans, according to Fox News.
