President-elect Joe Biden's signaling of a shift in America's foreign policy objectives is welcome news in Berlin, where German officials have fretted over tariffs for the last four years.

Biden said he will turn away from outgoing President Donald Trump's "America First" strategy to a more outward-looking U.S. that seems eager to lead, and to embrace its global allies once again. [...]

Biden's win has revived hopes of a U.S.-EU trade agreement after a previous attempt to reach such a deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), ended in failure in 2016 after three years of negotiations.

European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen cautioned that a fresh approach was needed on trade, and said the EU should take the initiative to build bridges with the U.S. "We know that we cannot turn the clock back. Not on trade, not on TTIP," von der Leyen said several weeks ago in a speech at the EU ambassadors' conference.

"We cannot go back to the exact same agenda we had five years ago. We should not fall into that trap. We need a fresh approach. Because the world has changed and so have the United States and so has Europe."

Beyer agreed that as "trade is a key issue across the Atlantic, we shouldn't waste time to dream about transatlantic nostalgia, the TTIP times didn't come true or become a reality."