Celeste Drake, who often opposed trade agreements in her eight years leading trade and globalization policy at the AFL-CIO, was named Made in America director, a new job at the Office of Management and Budget. Most recently, she was a top lobbyist at the Directors Guild of America. The Biden administration said Drake “will shape and implement Federal procurement and financial management policy to help carry out the President’s vision of a future made in all of America by all of America’s workers -- including minority entrepreneurs and small businesses in every region in our country.”
The U.S. praised Vietnam for its role in the World Trade Organization fisheries negotiations and its fight against transshipment, but said it has concerns about sanitary and phytosanitary measures in Vietnam that in the U.S. view are unwarranted barriers to trade.
Even as the U.S. and the European Union work privately to resolve their differences over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, a U.S. representative at the World Trade Organization complained that the EU provided no status update on coming into compliance over Airbus subsidies. The EU said that the measures it took in August 2020 (see 2008280051) were more than enough to comply with a WTO ruling, according to a Geneva trade official.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard many bipartisan complaints about the pain of both Section 301 tariffs and Europe's retaliatory tariffs in response to steel tariffs, but stood her ground on both during a hearing in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
At a webinar on U.S.-Vietnam economic relations, Ambassador Ha Kim Ngoc said Vietnam is working to narrow the trade deficit with the U.S., whether by buying more American agricultural exports or encouraging Vietnamese businesses to open factories in the U.S. "I don’t think we can solve the problem overnight, with COVID-19 and the increased demand of the goods from Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam," he said April 27.
The U.S. should lead the charge to reopen the Environmental Goods Agreement in Geneva, House Ways and Means Republicans wrote April 22, on Earth Day. This follows a resolution introduced earlier in the month by four pro-trade Democrats calling for the same thing (see 2104080050).
Clete Willems, a former Donald Trump administration trade staffer, told the Senate Finance Committee that technology sales to China help pay for research and development here, so as Congress considers how to bolster the semiconductor industry, it should also be sure not to put export controls on goods that are not sensitive.
A bill that aims “to protect American businesses and government institutions from attacks designed to steal sensitive information” was introduced April 21 by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., his office announced. The Combating Chinese Purloining (CCP) of Trade Secrets Act would expand penalties for companies, business associations or individuals who misappropriate trade secrets, the press release said. The penalties mentioned include “import restrictions,” denial of export licenses, visa denials and a prohibition on applications for patent protection. The text of the bill is not yet available.
Former U.S. negotiators for the Environmental Goods Agreement at the World Trade Organization say the collapse of talks in 2016 means trying again with the countries that are major players in solar panels, wind turbines and the like is not likely to be productive this year. Mark Linscott, former assistant U.S. trade representative at the WTO, said he thinks even getting the fisheries subsidies deal done in Geneva this year is “dicey.” He recalled that it seemed promising when a plurilateral approach was taken on EGA, and China, when it was in the rotating chair at the G-20 group of nations, it pushed for a ministerial statement on the EGA that said it had found a landing zone, and the countries would “aim to conclude ... an ambitious, future-oriented EGA that that seeks to eliminate tariffs on a broad range of environmental goods by an EGA Ministerial meeting to be held by the end of 2016.”
Beth Baltzan, a former Democratic trade counsel at the House Ways and Means Committee and career staffer in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, has been named a senior advisor to USTR Katherine Tai. “She understands the connective tissues in our economy and I look forward to leaning on her expertise and guidance as we shape a worker-centric trade policy,” Tai said in a statement announcing the appointment. Baltzan has testified before Congress that the World Trade Organization hobbled trade remedies (see 1905220038) and has been critical of the impulse to lower tariffs as the primary approach of trade policy (see 1905220038).