WASHINGTON – The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released “Adapting Trade Policy for Supply Chain Resilience: Responding to Today’s Global Economic Challenges,” a series of six policy papers on trade and investment policy initiatives that promote supply chain resilience. The policy papers address, respectively, a trade policy framework for supply chain resilience; challenges and opportunities for advancing resilience in the U.S. textile and apparel industries; use of rules of origin to promote resilience; how more effective responses to non-market policies and practices build resilience; data and analytics for developing resilience-oriented trade policy; and sectoral trade agreements for enhancing resilience.
The policy paper series represents the culmination of a comprehensive stakeholder engagement effort. In March 2024, USTR initiated a request for public comment through a Federal Register notice. The notice sought information on developing sector-specific policy tools, strengthening domestic manufacturing and services, collaborating with like-minded trading partners and allies, and measuring resilience, among other topics. In May 2024, USTR received testimony from 84 witnesses in Washington, D.C.; St. Paul, Minnesota; and New York, New York, as well as virtually. The comment docket, which closed in June 2024, is public and contains nearly 300 submissions from a wide range of stakeholders, including labor unions and labor rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, environmental NGOs, companies small, medium, and large, and trade associations, as well as foreign governments.
“The pandemic illustrated that our pre-existing approach to trade, with its principal focus on reducing barriers to maximize short-term efficiency and minimize costs, had created significant vulnerabilities. As economic policy leaders, it is our responsibility to address these flaws. These policy papers distill the insights we have gathered at USTR that point the way forward to adapting trade policy approaches and tools in service of achieving resilience in supply chains,” said Ambassador Katherine Tai. “This work is crucial to bringing badly needed innovation to trade policy so that, through collaboration with participants in the U.S. and global economy and with Congress and our trading partners, we can make progress in ensuring trade policy works in service of our people and the planet – and not the other way around. We greatly appreciate all stakeholders for sharing your insights and experiences, and encourage you to keep advancing these important conversations.”
Each policy paper distills USTR’s past progress in strengthening supply chains and outlines new approaches and strategies:
- “Reshaping the Global Trade Paradigm” (Policy Paper No. 1) explores four distinct but complementary dimensions of resilience—sustainability, security, diversity, and transparency—by synthesizing stakeholder views and relevant literature, reviews USTR actions that have advanced supply chain resilience, and builds a conceptual foundation for exploring new tools and approaches.
- “Sustaining Resilient Textile and Apparel Supply Chains” (Policy Paper No. 2) provides an overview of the domestic textile and apparel industries and related U.S. trade agreement provisions, examines the challenges confronting the sector, identifies areas for further discussion and analysis, and presents trade policy approaches to support more resilient textile and apparel supply chains.
- “Harnessing Rules of Origin for Resilience” (Policy Paper No. 3) examines both preferential and non-preferential rules of origin, discusses emerging stakeholder concerns about their vulnerabilities, and outlines new policy approaches and areas for further analysis.
- “Countering Non-Market Policies and Practices to Strengthen Supply Chain Resilience” (Policy Paper No. 4) describes the challenges that non-market policies and practices (NMPPs) present to healthy markets and competition, explains how certain actors use NMPPs to undermine supply chain resilience, and outlines approaches to addressing NMPPs and their effects on supply chains.
- “Improving Data and Analytical Tools to Promote Supply Chain Resilience” (Policy Paper No. 5) highlights recent studies and analyses of supply chain sustainability, security, diversity, and transparency; examines data and analytical challenges in measuring and assessing supply chain resilience; reviews U.S. government supply chain-related data gathering efforts; and outlines new approaches and implications for harnessing existing and new data and analytics resources to address limitations.
- “Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience through Sectoral Trade Agreements” (Policy Paper No. 6) discusses how a new model of formal trade agreements targeting specific sectors or industries, establishing enforceable disciplines, and encompassing like-minded partners across the supply chain could provide a broad and meaningful framework for achieving the principles and objectives of supply chain resilience.
