Trade nominee vows to help boost economy

WASHINGTON — Katherine Tai, President Joe Biden’s pick for U.S. trade representative, promised lawmakers during her confirmation hearing Thursday that she would work with Congress to help reinvigorate the economy and aggressively enforce U.S. trade rules against China, Mexico and other trading partners.

Tai, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, said her background challenging China’s unfair trade practices in the Obama administration had given her knowledge of “the opportunities and limitations in our existing toolbox.” She promised to work with allies and enforce the terms of the trade deal that former President Donald Trump signed with Beijing last year, while working to develop a more “strategic and coherent plan” for competing with China’s state-directed economy.

As trade representative, Tai would work toward several of the Biden administration’s key goals, including helping to restore U.S. alliances abroad and reforming and enforcing U.S. trade rules to help alleviate inequality and mitigate climate change.

In her testimony Thursday morning, Tai promised to ensure that trading partners adhered to new trade rules, including the agreement that Trump signed with China last year and new measures included in the revised North American trade deal, the United States-mexico-canada Agreement.

She declined to give many specifics on the trade policies the Biden administration would pursue, saying instead she would review existing tariffs and trade negotiations. But she laid out a philosophy on trade that would support broader, more equitable growth and “recognize that people are workers and wage earners, not just consumers,” which she said would be a significant departure from the past.

Biden and other Democrats have complained that the trade policies of previous presidents were often driven by the interests of corporations and lobbyists and ended up surrendering the interests of lower-wage workers for the benefit of certain businesses and exporters.

Trade policy for the past several decades has often fallen “into a pattern where one sector of our economy and one segment of our workers feel like their livelihoods and their opportunities are sacrificed to another part of our economy,” Tai said.

She said the administration would try “to break out of that pattern so that what we are doing in trade is coordinated with what we are doing in other areas, but also not forcing us to pit one of our segments of our workers and our economy against another.”

Asked about the tariffs that Trump had placed on foreign metals, Tai said tariffs were “a legitimate tool in the trade toolbox” but that the global steel and aluminum industries face larger problems with overcapacity that might require other policy solutions. She also said that she was aware of “the many concerns” that had arisen with the process of companies applying for exclusions from the tariffs and said that reviewing that system with an eye to transparency, predictability and due process would be “very high on my radar.”

Tai most recently worked as chief trade counsel of the House Ways and Means Committee, where she helped hammer out reforms that ultimately brought Democrats on board with USMCA, which was negotiated by Trump. Before that, she served in the trade representative’s general counsel office, where she brought several successful cases against China’s trade practices at the World Trade Organization.

If confirmed, Tai would be the first woman of color and first Asian American to serve in the position.

Tai also said she wanted take a role in a new Biden administration effort to strengthen critical supply chains, saying that past trade policy had focused on efficiency rather than resilience and needed to be rethought. She said she shared the Trump administration’s goal of bringing supply chains back to America but that the prior administration’s policies had created “a lot of disruption and consternation.”

She pledged to reengage the United States at the World Trade Organization, which the Trump administration largely bypassed or ignored, but acknowledged that the global trade group faced big challenges to its effectiveness.

The United States cannot afford not to be a leader in the organization, she said, but “the WTO does need reform.”

Tai also expressed interest in resolving a long-running trade dispute between the European Union and the United States at the World Trade Organization over subsidies given to aircraft-makers Boeing and Airbus, which has resulted in a volley of tariffs.

Senators of both parties were mostly complimentary of Tai’s experience and trade knowledge, although several Republican senators expressed concerns about her failure to commit to free trade in principle and to pledge to aggressively drive forward new trade negotiations.

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-idaho, praised Tai’s extensive experience in trade but raised concerns about Biden’s pledges to address domestic priorities first before signing any new trade deals.

“Our businesses and workers are ready to sell American to all foreign customers right now,” Crapo said. “Our businesses need that access more than ever because other countries are not standing still.”

Tai said she planned to review the trade negotiations with Britain, saying that the country’s departure from Europe, the coronavirus pandemic and other developments since negotiations started in 2018 demanded new consideration.