The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has warmly endorsed Katherine Tai to be U.S. trade representative. In a letter sent Feb. 23, Executive Vice President Myron Brilliant said her experience at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and as chief trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, is invaluable. “She combines policy acumen, negotiating experience, and political savvy,” he wrote. “While one important aspect of USTR’s mission is to address unfair trading practices, the previous Administration’s dramatic expansion in the application of tariffs contributed directly to a manufacturing and agriculture recession well in advance of the [COVID-19] pandemic, and this experience illustrates the perils of an excessive reliance on tariffs. The next USTR must avoid the use of tariffs as a blunt instrument, and must avoid inaction on trade agreements as well,” he said, adding that Tai understands that.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the U.S. trade representative nominee has “really extraordinary skill in bringing people together,” and that it's critical to confirm her, deputy Treasury secretary nominee Wally Adeyemo, and the Health and Human Services secretary, so they can get to work. Wyden, who spoke with reporters Feb. 22, didn't spend much time on trade issues, but he said he thinks Katherine Tai is “going to do a first-rate job” heading the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., reintroduced a bill Feb. 18 that would control the export of certain technology and intellectual property to China. The legislation was previously introduced in 2019, and it is among a slate of bills “to confront the Chinese Communist Party’s malign influence” reintroduced by Green.
The Senate Finance Committee scheduled a hearing to consider Katherine Tai to be the next U.S. trade representative. They will interview her Feb. 25 at 10 a.m.
Bob Zoellick, a U.S. trade representative during the George W. Bush administrations, said that a successful way of completing a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom would be to connect the North American agenda to the U.K. “It gives you more weight,” he said during a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace webinar Feb. 17. “It helps you with North American integration.” He suggested that the FTA could look at carbon emissions, as well as labor, and he believes it could get bipartisan support for extending trade promotion authority, so it could get done.
Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the most prominent China hawks in Congress, thinks that the Bureau of Industry and Security is buried within an organization “hostile to the aggressive use of export controls,” and so it should be moved from the Commerce Department to the State Department, because, he says, that department puts national security first. Cotton, who has published a lengthy report on what he calls the economic long war with China, discussed his views during an online program at the Reagan Presidential Foundation on Feb. 18.
The semiconductor, chemicals, medical devices and aviation industries could be especially hurt by decoupling, according to a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report attempting to quantify the costs of stopping or slowing sales to China, and in the case of chemicals, high tariffs on Chinese inputs used by U.S. chemical plants. Some of the actions modeled in the report have already happened, such as 25% tariffs on chemicals from China, and China's retaliatory tariffs on chemical exports. But while semiconductor exports to ZTE, Huawei and Fujian Jinhua have been restricted, there has not been a complete ban on the export of chips to China, which is what the report modeled.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was officially confirmed as the next director-general of the World Trade Organization on Feb. 15, and the U.S. charge d'affaires, David Bisbee, in Geneva said she has deep knowledge and experience in “economics, trade, and diplomacy.” He said, “Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has promised that under her leadership it will not be business as usual for the WTO, and we are excited and confident that she has the skills necessary to make good on this promise.” Myron Brilliant, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in congratulating Okonjo-Iweala, said that “we need to restore the WTO as a forum for meaningful trade negotiations and the settlement of commercial disputes. We’re committed to doing our part to make that happen.”
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said he doesn't expect U.S. trade representative nominee Katherine Tai to have a hearing before mid-March. Because there's nothing controversial about her, he said, if she does get a hearing before Congress takes its Easter break, he thinks the full vote can also be done within days. Grassley told reporters on a Feb. 16 phone call that when he spoke with Tai recently, he told her that “I appreciated this administration's approach to China, working to get Japan, South Korea, Europe, Canada, and the United States on the same page with China.” He said he also told her the United Kingdom free trade negotiations “ought to have priority.”
The Combating Global Corruption Act, introduced by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Todd Young, R-Ind., and five other Democratic senators, would require the State Department to rank all foreign countries in three tiers based on their efforts to fight corruption. The bill, introduced Jan. 22, asks the Treasury and State departments to evaluate all foreigners “engaged in grand corruption” in tier 3 countries, to see if they should have Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act sanctions against them. Congress wants an annual report of who was evaluated, who was sanctioned, and why.