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The woman is hardly known, but she will soon play a central role in world politics: Gina Raimondo, 49 years old, previously governor of the small state of Rhode Island, is America's new trade minister.

On Tuesday the Senate confirmed it after an hour-long hearing, with 84 to 15 votes, Democrats and Republicans were largely in agreement.

Raimondo succeeds Wilbur Ross - an architect of the trade wars in the Donald Trump era. 

In Rhode Island, Raimondo once pushed through a major pension cut against the opposition of the trade unions and has since been considered a tough fighter for the interests of the economy.

It is now taking over one of the most important authorities in the USA.

The Department of Commerce employs 43,000 people and has an annual budget of $ 8 billion.

All sorts of things fall under his responsibility: drafting industrial standards, granting fishing rights, weather forecasting - and America’s customs policy.

One of the most important questions at the start of Raimondo's tenure is what will become of the tariffs on steel and aluminum that the country imposed in June 2018.

They were Trump's first economic attack on Europe. And they were an insult.

Because Raimondo's predecessor Ross had developed the notorious argument that the import of the metals threatened the national security of the USA - allied states, including Germany, were suddenly seen as a danger.

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Brussels retaliated only a few weeks later and levied taxes on Harleys, whiskey and

Levi's jeans.

The new US President Joe Biden says now

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he wanted to reconcile with the old partners, especially with Germany, France and Great Britain.

It is therefore quite possible that Raimondo will announce an end to the steel tariffs in the coming months, especially since the EU has already offered to lift its measures in return. 

The tariffs on Chinese imports worth 360 billion dollars, which Trump introduced, should not affect Raimondo for now.

Biden, her boss, is demanding the same concessions from Beijing as Trump did before him: less government subsidies, opening of the markets for America's internet companies, no theft of technology.

In addition, there are political demands such as an end to the suppression of the Uyghurs and the democracy movement in Hong Kong.

"Biden government embraces worst elements of the Communist Party"

Still, some senators accused Raimondo on Tuesday of being too lenient with China.

Their spokesman was the Republican Ted Cruz from Texas.

He bothers that Raimondo does not promise to keep Huawei on the Ministry of Commerce's blacklist.

Trump had banned the Chinese tech giant from doing business in the United States on suspicion of espionage.

"The Biden government," said Cruz, who absolutely wanted to prevent Raimondo, "embraces the worst elements of the Communist Party."

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Biden and Raimondo have put Trump's actions against Chinese internet companies to the test.

For example, you are currently not taking action against the video app TikTok, which Trump also suspected of espionage.

Trump had tried to force the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the US business to domestic partners.

The talks were with the software company Oracle and the supermarket chain Walmart.

But now there is no longer any question of that. 

Trump himself had not gotten very far on the subject of trade.

He once stood with the promise to reduce America's trade deficit.

But all of its tariffs have done little.

The loss totaled more than $ 2.4 trillion during Trump's tenure - an increase of 25 percent over the last four years under Barack Obama.

Even the Republicans believe that Trump's trade policy has failed.

A bigger deficit than Obama - that is the ultimate economic defeat.

The "Tariff Man," aiming to improve America's bottom line, only made things worse.

And that's hardly because of Corona.

Even in Trump's three years in office before the pandemic, the gap was consistently larger than in the Obama era.

Now Biden and Raimondo want at least to prevent the minus from growing further.

For this reason, too, they should be in no hurry to lift the tariffs on China.

Some of the Trump-era trade wars might come in handy for both of them.