While President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are different from each other in many ways, there are several similarities in how they have approached the office.
Despite their diverging platforms and plans about how to make the country successful, there are threads that have run through Trump’s first term into Biden’s.
Here are three ways Biden has mirrored his 2024 rival during his time in the Oval Office.
Last month, Biden announced tariffs on $18 billion worth of imports of Chinese electric vehicles and similar goods over the next two years.
Electric vehicles imported from China will be subject to quadrupled tariffs, rising from 27.5% to 100%. The move is meant to pressure American manufacturers to challenge China’s current practice of encouraging very low pricing for domestic EV manufacturers while they levy a 40% tariff on U.S. car imports to China.
The ramped-up tariffs on electric vehicles are a continuation of the tariffs Trump instituted during his presidency that Biden has left in place. While Trump was president, he imposed 30%-50% tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines and later imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from any country.
In a possible second Trump term, Trump is eyeing 60% tariffs on all the $427 billion worth of goods China sends the United States each year.
On Tuesday, Biden is expected to act unilaterally to address the border crisis after a bipartisan Senate border bill failed. Details about Biden’s plan haven’t been released, but it is expected that the executive order will resemble the failed bill, including allowing officials to deport migrants who enter the country illegally without processing their asylum requests once the daily limit is met.
“As we have said before, the administration continues to explore a series of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system,” a Biden spokesperson said.
Biden is leaning on authority granted to the president in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the president to “suspend the entry” of foreigners if their arrival is “detrimental to the interests” of the country.
Trump relied on the same section when he issued his travel ban, halting immigration and travel from several majority-Muslim countries to keep migrants from crossing the U.S. border.
There are only so many ways to get something done as the president: ask Congress or do it yourself. Biden has been mirroring Trump’s string of executive orders to execute his plans when a divided Congress has stopped him from acting.
Relying on a flurry of executive orders to execute an agenda didn’t originate with Trump. Then-President Barack Obama said, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” when he was battling with Republicans in Congress blocking his agenda.
Biden and Trump had a unified government during their first terms but faced parties that were internally fractured. Trump had to deal with defiance from the late Sen. John McCain when he tried to repeal Obamacare, while Biden has had to deal with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (I-WV), defiant Democrats who became independents.
Trump issued the most executive orders of the pair, with 220, many of which were overturned by Biden in the earlier days of his presidency. Biden has issued 138 executive orders.
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Biden and Trump cracked down on the border in their own ways via executive order, and it is a way to advance policy in a gridlocked Congress.
Via executive order, Biden has accomplished many of his policy goals, including canceling some student loan debt.