Lawmakers, lobbyists and farm groups are anxious for the Biden administration to take its first concrete steps to begin negotiating international trade agreements and reform at the World Trade Organization to improve international access for U.S. goods as well as rein in China’s expanding global influence.

The U.S. was one of nine countries critical of the European Union last year when it unveiled a plan to tax imports based on their carbon footprint, but that was under the Trump administration. Now the Biden administration is signaling a stronger kinship to the EU’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on an international scale.

The U.S. is ratcheting up its punishment on the European Union with new tariffs on French and German wine and other alcoholic beverages as both sides remain entrenched over aircraft subsidies.

President-elect Joe Biden tells a New York Times columnist that he won't immediately remove the 25% tariffs on Chinese exports, but instead will reassess the situation and work with allies to pressure China to stop intellectual property abuses.

China is again promising that it has made structural changes to its tariff rate quota system to import corn, wheat and rice, but it’s still not clear if that’s the case as the new deadline approaches for the U.S. to tell the World Trade Organization if it agrees.

A World Trade Organization panel ruled Tuesday that the U.S. broke its international commitments by circumventing the WTO dispute system and hitting China in 2018 with tariffs on $234 billion worth of its goods.