You can tell a lot about a president’s politics by his foreign visits. Joe Biden’s decision to skip King Charles’s coronation in favour of a fly-by visit to Belfast and three days in the Republic of Ireland gave an indication of his priorities. Biden presents himself at home as an Irish-American with a charmingly unserious hostility towards Britain: ‘The BBC?’ he told a reporter after his election victory in 2020. ‘I’m Irish!’ But it’s not all lighthearted. As President, Biden’s reflexive anti-Britishness seems to have coloured his foreign policy. He’s shown a striking reluctance to reciprocate Rishi Sunak’s attempts to refresh Britain’s credentials as America’s great ally.

Part of this may be down to Biden’s own fuzziness. When he posed with Gerry Adams for a photo, what message did he think this would send to those people who lived for so many years under the threat of IRA violence? He may just have not been thinking. When he mispronounced the Prime Minister’s name as ‘Rashid Sanook’, it may have been put down to an understandable confusion, given the revolving door at No. 10. The occasional anti-British briefing by his advisers might also be attributed to the fact that he has so many of them, quick to see the world as good liberals vs bad conservatives, with Brexit and Trump in the latter camp.

Nevertheless, over the coming week Biden, who is in fact as English as he is Irish by descent, will be travelling to Britain. He will meet both the King and the Prime Minister. The visit represents another opportunity to put the US’s relationship with Britain on a more friendly footing. For all Biden’s schtick, Britain remains America’s most durable and reliable ally. It is Britain, once again, which is playing the major role in a US-led military campaign – in this case providing weapons and other support for Ukraine to resist Putin’s invasion.

Yet Biden did not back Ben Wallace, the UK Defence Secretary, for his Nato candidacy, in spite of his record of getting every strategic decision on Russian aggression right. Word is that Biden’s wife has persuaded him to back Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union president, who was famously a disastrous German defence minister. The Bidens espouse identity politics and so are eager to see a woman in such a role, even if supporting such a poor candidate shows more contempt for Nato than Trump ever did.

It is in Britain that Biden will find his most supportive trading partner in Europe, too. The EU is forever dreaming up ways to frustrate US tech giants; Britain has generally been far more accommodating. Unlike the EU, Britain has not sought to retaliate against Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act – a blatant piece of borrow-and-spend (and inflationary) protectionism dressed up as environmental policy.

Sunak has said that Americans are free to subsidise whoever they like: Britain prefers to compete on smarter regulation and a better business environment. But there is no denying that Britain and America are on slightly different paths. Biden has more in common with Trump than he likes to think.

Britain is seeking to build free-trade alliances. American politics is going through a drawbridge-up phase: a Brexit free-trade deal will not be forthcoming because neither Republicans nor Democrats are in the mood to strike trade deals. Both parties prefer tariffs and subsidies, building walls around the US economy. The world and America will be poorer as a result.

Since Brexit, the UK has successfully applied to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade organisation with Canada and Japan. We have set up deals with 65 low- and middle-income countries, through the establishment of Developing Countries Trading Scheme. In a time of populism, parochialism and protectionism, Britain stands as a country that wants to strike new global alliances and lower barriers to trade and co-operation. Biden, alas, is less interested.

In time, it will dawn on Biden and his Democrats that protectionism is no route to riches. The lesson has been learned many times before. During George W. Bush’s time in office, for instance, a government-backed analysis of steel tariffs found that they had caused a net loss of US jobs because manufacturers had to bear higher raw material costs. At a time of global downturn and high inflation in commodity prices, a new round of protectionism is the last thing that America or the world needs.

Next week the outward-reaching Rishi Sunak will try once again to do business with the inward-looking Joe Biden. The hope is that President Biden will be wise enough to seize the moment. In the past, meetings between prime ministers and presidents have focused too much on ‘the special relationship’, an abstract term that conceals as much as it reveals.

What’s more important is that he shows a true willingness to put aside his prejudices and do business with Britain. When Sunak turned up in Belfast to welcome the President to UK soil, Biden virtually ignored him, choosing instead to hug a random stranger on the tarmac. Again, that may have been an innocent mistake, but it looked rude. Manners matter in diplomacy. Next week, Sunak will once more extend the hand of British friendship to America. This time, the President should accept it.