Sin Chew Daily

With 290 elector votes against Trump's 214, surpassing the magic number of 270, Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

Trump, nevertheless, is not going to concede defeat and this political soap opera will likely goon until his term expires on January 20 next year.

Looking at the entire presidential race, Trump actually did not lose to Biden, but the coronavirus.

Earlier this year, the country's unemployment rate was still an enviable 3.5%, the lowest in half a century.

From 2019 to 2019, the US economy grew by an average annual rate of 2.5%, and the Dow surged almost 10,000 points since he took office, to a record high of 29,569. He did not wage a single war during his term but instead put America's interest first and hiked import duties.

There wasn't any good excuse back then for Americans to deny him a second term.

There came the virus. More than 10 million have so far been infected and over 20,000 killed. The economy is expected to shrink by more than 5% this year while April unemployment soared to 14%. DJIA has plunged by over 10,000 points and racial tension is taut. Several swing states have swung towards his rival, and his hope of re-election is as well dashed.

Biden has won, albeit in an awkward manner. Even with all the advantages over his rival, he only bagged 3% more popular votes than the incumbent president, not much better than Clinton's 1.9% edge over the president four years ago.

The Democrats need to reflect what has gone wrong with the people, and the president -elect needs to narrow the rift between his party and the Republican.

Barring an unforeseen circumstances, Biden will be the new boss at the White House next January. Devoting his entire life to politics, the 77-year-old has finally reached the pinnacle of his political career.

Biden became Barack Obama's vice president back in 2009 until 2017. The reason Obama had picked him was very simple. He was well versed in diplomacy being the chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and had been a senator for seven terms from 1973 at the age of 31, until he became vice president. This, to a "political rookie" like Obama was extremely important.

Biden stressed three things in his victory speech: the victory is a victory of the people of America. "It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, to lower the temperature, to see each other again, to listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemies." As president, he promised to unite and not divide the country.

Secondly, he would set up a professional team to battle the coronavirus, which is key to the country's economic recovery.

Thirdly, he vowed to "make America respected around the world again".

This means when he takes over the White House, Biden will start right away fighting the virus and to mend the relations between his party and GOP, and between the whites and coloreds, and to revive the economy.

Externally, he needs to address the "America First" principle upheld by the Trump administration and to improve the torn relations with countries in diplomacy, bilateral trade and international relationship, while leading America back to the right track.

The US-EU relation messed up by Trump needs to be restored, and new strategies to deal with China sought. He may reinstate talks with Beijing although he is not about to compromise easily anytime, and America will still be the Big Brother.

Although Biden has said he will end the Sino-American trade war and abolish the tariffs imposed on goods from China and EU, we feel that this is yet to be proven, at least he has never softened his stance on China.

Before the election he promised to look into environment and climate change issues, so we expect him to return to Paris Agreement and WHO which Trump withdrew from. He also promised to jointly develop the coronavirus vaccine with China, and fight the virus together.

There is only hope for the recovery of global economy if the pandemic is put under control and all travel restrictions lifted. With the virus still very much in force, all economic forecasts for next year will be impractical. Biden should know very well that he shouldn't be overly optimistic about the economic outlook next year.

Biden is inheriting a nation that has been messed up by his headstrong predecessor.. There's still a lot of things waiting for him to fix up, in diplomacy, trade, economy, society, safety, racial relations, immigrants, medical care, labor…and the list goes on!