A top US trade official sees progress in helping workers. Voters will decide if his style continues

WASHINGTON (AP) – As the US trade representative, Katherine Tai i required by law to avoid discussing the presidential election. But his views on fair trade are over elections in November.

Voters are being asked to decide who is best to work with the whole world or threaten it. Do they want to push for worker protections in trade negotiations, as Tai did for the Biden-Harris administration? Or should the United States collect taxes almost everything it imports like Donald Trump did you commit to doing?

After nearly four years on the job, Tai feels he is making progress in getting the US and its trading partners to focus more on workers’ rights. Decades of trade deals often prioritized keeping costs down by finding cheap labor, which in some cases, could be exploited.

“You can’t make a business plan on your own,” Tai said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I am sure that the way we are on is the right way to go. I think the only question is how much progress we can make in the coming years.”

It’s a move that has cited business leaders, economists and Republicans who say the US has not made enough progress on new trade relations and countering China’s rise.

“There are no trade agreements, no negotiations to expand free trade agreements,” Rep. Carol Miller, RW.Va., said at an April congressional hearing with Tai. “Compared to China’s ambitions, the United States is lagging behind in every area of ​​the world.”

Trump says broad tariffs of at least 20% on all imports — and possibly even more on some products from China and Mexico — will bring back American factory jobs. Most economists say it could hurt economic growth and raise inflation, although the former president dismissed those concerns.

“If you’re a foreign country and you don’t make your product here, then you’re going to have to pay taxes, which is enough money, it’s going to go into our treasury, it’s going to reduce taxes,” Trump, the presidential candidate of Republic. this year, said a recent conference in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Ivy League background and blue outlook

Tai has degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School, but he strives to have a good business perspective. He said that he has incorporated the once marginalized voices of the trade union into the business process.

The Biden-Harris administration has yet to reject the charges. It saved the Chinese from Trump’s presidency. It imposed a 100% tax on Chinese electric carsalthough there isn’t much of a US market for these cars to call, without fees, about $12,000. Tai sees that as a way to protect the emerging industry against sponsored and unfair competition.

But the administration also wants to bolster US workers in the face of competition from China with other industrial policies, such as subsidies for computer chip factories and tax breaks for technologies in renewable energy sources.

The truth, according to some economists, is that domestic firms did not just lose jobs in China. There was a productivity gain which meant that some manufacturers needed fewer employees and there was a wider shift as more workers moved away from development and into the service sector. Those factors are often not emphasized enough by Tai, said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Center for International Economics.

“It seems to me he’s focused on the easy one – where you can blame the ‘bad guy,’ China,” Lovely said.

There is unfinished business.

The business pillar of Indo-Pacific Economic Planning led by Tai remains incomplete. The effort by Washington and its Asian partners is aimed at combating China’s rise without requiring a trade deal, but it focuses more on labor rights and environmental protection than previous proposals.

“What I found is that we all want the same thing,” Tai said. “Basically, what we’re doing is innovating the way you do business strategy, innovating the way globalization is going to be in the future.”

Tai said he is trying to strengthen the trade policy with other countries “that allows us to build our middle class as well as stop fighting them, because it has been the model we have been pursuing for the past several decades ago.”

William Reinsch at the Center for International Policy Studies said it is not surprising that Asian countries involved in the project would say they are supporting their middle class workers. But he said Democrats are not providing the access to American markets that business partners want in order to focus on workers.

“The consistent message we have received from our Asian partners is that they want tangible benefits, and the US is not providing any,” he said. “Trying to reorganize the cultural order of society, however good it may be, can be a great struggle.”

The revised North American trade agreement is an example

Tai sees himself as having proof of concept that his business model can succeed. It just happens to come out of US-Mexico-Canada AgreementThe revised North American Free Trade Agreement was signed during the Trump administration and has been cited by Trump as proof that he knows how to negotiate with the rest of the world.

In his interview, Tai said the agreement includes a “rapid response mechanism” that enables the government to punish firms that violate workers’ rights. Tai said that by the end of September, the US government had requested the machine 28 times and completed 25 of those attempts.

Tai said that directly benefited the 30,000 workers in Mexico who could choose to represent their unions, allowing them to receive higher wages, back pay and other benefits.

“We’re empowering the workforce through business,” he said. “And by empowering Mexican workers, we’re making sure that American workers don’t have to compete with workers in neighboring countries who are being abused and disenfranchised.”

The praise for the deal appears to be a rare point of contact on trade between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration. But their views are different. Trump is telling voters that his threats of big tariffs could get foreign governments to accept America’s terms on trade and immigration.

“I ended NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever, and replaced it with the USMCA, the best trade deal ever,” he said Monday, referring to North American Free Trade Agreement signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Tai, who is barred by the federal Hatch Act from intervening in the presidential campaign from his office, is careful with his words. But he disputes Trump’s claim.

He notes that there have been two trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico. The first discussion was between the Trump administration and two other nations. But the second was between Trump’s team and congressional Democrats who needed to ratify the deal and focused on labor protections, a role Tai worked in when he was congressional staffer.

But now, he added, getting a written agreement on trade protection and rights is never enough. Text needs to be backed up with action.

He said: “They are just words on this page unless they are put into action.”