Joe Biden | Business Post

Marion McKeone: This year’s St Patrick’s US visit was all about the North

The 2023 St Patrick’s visit to the White House and Capitol Hill centred on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement – and the barriers to forward movement on the Windsor framework

Northern Ireland

Elaine Byrne: The EU’s role in the Good Friday Agreement has been written out of history

Membership of the EU enabled the thawing of relations between Ireland and Britain, yet the bloc’s role in the quest for peace on this island has been overlooked

Matt Cooper: Leo the Lip seems to think representing Ireland abroad is a joking matter

Making an ill-advised Clinton quip and ducking out of an important lunch with big multinational American investors in Ireland does not become an Taoiseach

Joe Biden confirms Ireland visit to mark 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement

The US President will go to both Northern Ireland and the Republic in a trip which is expected to last for five days

Marion McKeone: Biden attains world leader status, but is it enough to impress US voters?

Joe Biden’s staunch support of Ukraine is driven by his determination to leave a strong legacy. But public support for involvement in the war is waning, the 2024 election is not far off, and where the Republicans stand on it is anyone’s guess

Why toxic train crashes may prove unhealthy for Biden’s prospects

Two crashes only a fortnight apart spewed dangerous chemicals on to land and into waterways in Ohio and Detroit, drawing attention to the effects of cutbacks on railway services

Marion McKeone: Misogyny mob out in force as Nikki Haley gets first in line for White House bid

Trump leads the chorus of condescension as the former UN ambassador declares she is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidency, but it’s thought Haley could take votes from Ron DeSantis, thus favouring Trump

Lucinda Creighton: Joe Biden has embraced the worst of Trump’s economic policies

The US president has been around long enough to know that shutting off America from the rest of the world will not save American jobs, so why is he doing it?

Marion McKeone: Biden fighting the law of diminishing returns as his presidency enters part two

Biden is losing a legendary chief of staff just as his ageing presidency is facing into the headwinds of a debt crisis and the venom of the GOP

Marion McKeone: Republicans seeking revenge for Trump have Hunter Biden firmly in their sights

Apart from its obsession with the US president’s son, the real objective of the ‘Biden Family Investigation’ appears to be to flood Joe Biden’s administration with a deluge of harmful allegations, distract the president and sink any bid for a second term

Married to the truth: Is Julian Assange’s incarceration coming to an end?

After seven years confined to the Ecuadorian embassy, and imprisoned since 2019, the WikiLeaks founder is struggling with poor physical and mental health, his wife Stella tells this newspaper in an interview. However, his nomination for this year’s Sakharov Prize for human rights suggests the EU may take a more robust stance on his incarceration

Marion McKeone: US will continue its dance at the edge of democracy next year

With Trump tilting for the White House again, pursued by three criminal indictments, and the country’s legal pillars crumbling under the weight of right-wing political expediency, it will be more of the same car crash politics in 2023

International Relations

Lucinda Creighton: Perfect storm of global crises must be met with a robust and united US-EU front

Inflation, energy costs, trade wars and geopolitical problems are likely to remain issues globally in 2023, so Europe and its allies need to shape up

Marion McKeone: Democracy triumphs in America and abroad, but victory is fragile

A turbulent year draws to a close with a historic White House meeting between US president Joe Biden and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky – sending a message to both Vladimir Putin and the rising tide of opposition from the authoritarian far-right

Marion McKeone: Biden’s ‘betrayal’ of rail unions could be Democrats’ undoing

By blocking a massive rail worker strike, the US president averted an immediate economic disaster, but he may have stripped the Democrats of their vital backbone in the next election

The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: Reading between the lines, the US-China ‘new cold war’ is very real

At the first ever presidential face-to-face meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping at the G20 in Bali, it was clear that the gulf which divides them is far wider than the Taiwan Strait

Lucinda Creighton: Biden confounds his critics while Trump’s comeback plan suffers a blow

With a number of Donald Trump’s picks coming unstuck in the US midterm elections, there are many in the Republican Party who will be hoping that the second coming of Trump has been irreparably damaged

Marion McKeone: Midterm success may give Biden what has most eluded him – respect

Following a tumultuous two years, the veteran Democratic president has pulled off a number of legislative wins and upset all the odds with the best midterm results for a first-term Democratic president since John F Kennedy

Marion McKeone: Republicans hold the upper hand as parties spend a record $10bn on campaigns

All of the seats in the US House of Representatives and about a third of the Senate seats are up for grabs in the elections, but it remains to be seen if the huge spend by Republicans and Democrats will have any effect on voters

Bargaining chips: How the semiconductor industry has emerged as an industrial battleground

Despite US manufacturers recently securing the $280 billion Chips Act, Intel is preparing to slash spending and cut tens of thousands of jobs. Why is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer making such a dramatic U-turn, and what could it mean for Ireland?