“Fundamentally, what we’re doing is innovating the way you do trade policy, innovating the way globalization is going to play out into the future.”
WASHINGTON – In interviews with the Associated Press and AFP, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai highlighted the Biden-Harris Administration’s worker-centered trade policy and what it means for workers, both home and abroad.
Ambassador Tai illustrated how a worker-centered trade policy is bolstering manufacturing, and supporting American jobs and key industries through important trade tools like tariffs and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s Rapid Response Mechanism.
The Biden-Harris Administration's trade policy prioritizes labor standards over mass production, protects workers instead of large corporations, promotes resilient supply chains in the 21st century global economy, and builds an economy from the bottom up and the middle out.
Read excerpts below:
Associated Press: Top US trade official sees progress in helping workers. Voters will decide if her approach continues
[Josh Boak, 10/06/24]
Tai has degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School, but strives for a blue-collar perspective on trade. She said that she has injected once-excluded labor union voices into the trade process.
[…]
Tai sees herself as having a proof of concept that her approach to trade can thrive. It just happens to come from the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the revised North American trade deal signed during the Trump administration and cited by Trump as evidence that he knows how to negotiate with the rest of the world.
In her interview, Tai said the agreement includes a “rapid response mechanism” that enables the government to penalize factories that violate workers’ rights. Tai said that as of late September, the U.S. government has invoked the mechanism 28 times and concluded 25 of those efforts.
Tai said that has directly benefited 30,000 Mexican workers who could elect their own union representation, allowing them to receive higher wages, back pay and other benefits.
“We are empowering workers through trade,” she said. “And by empowering Mexico’s workers, we are ensuring that America’s workers do not have to compete with workers in our neighboring country who are being exploited and who are being deprived of rights.”
[…]
She notes that there were actually two negotiations on trade with Canada and Mexico. The first negotiation was among the Trump administration and the other two nations. But the second was between Trump’s team and congressional Democrats who needed to ratify the deal and that led to worker protections, a component Tai worked on when she was a congressional staffer.
But then, she added, just getting a written deal on trade protections and rights is never enough. The text needs to be backed up by action.
“They’re just words on the page unless it’s implemented,” she said.
AFP: US trade chief defends tariff hikes when paired with investment
[Beiyi Seow, 10/04/24]
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai defended stiff tariff hikes against countries like China, arguing that paired with investment, they were a "legitimate and constructive" tool for re-invigorating domestic industries.
Tai's comments to AFP come a week after sharp tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, EV batteries and solar cells took effect -- with levies down the line on other products also recently finalized.
The latest moves targeting $18 billion in Chinese goods come weeks before November's US presidential election, with both Democrats and Republicans pushing a hard line on China as competition between Washington and Beijing intensifies.
In an interview Thursday looking back on her term, Tai defended the use of tariffs as a means "to counterbalance unfair trade" with China.
The latest hikes, she added, aim to help US clean energy investments "take root."
"We wanted to make sure that those increased areas are paired with the investments that we're making," Tai said, referring to efforts to build domestic industries like those for EVs, batteries and semiconductors.
"Once you've lost an industry, bringing it back from the brink is much, much harder," she said.
###
