Transformation of the US Trade Agenda Under Biden, USTR Amb. Tai

New York, NY— A new set of values has begun to guide US engagement with the global economy, with working-class power, climate sustainability, and supply chain resilience at the core of an emerging approach to global leadership. Over the summer, a study commission of scholars, former policymakers, and labor leaders organized by the Roosevelt Institute examined efforts to make US trade policy more pro-worker and pro-environment. The commission’s report, The New US Trade Agenda: Institutionalizing Middle-Out Economics in Foreign Commercial Policy, highlights themes that have emerged under the leadership of Ambassador Katherine Tai as US Trade Representative and represent an ambitious approach that has started to bear fruit for workers, industries, and the environment.

“Over the past few years, the United States has made a generational change to its approach to trade,” said the report’s author, Todd N. Tucker, Director of Industrial Policy and Trade at the Roosevelt Institute. “The paradigm developed in the Biden administration has focused on enhancing growth by raising public investment in critical industries, improving access to wealth by boosting worker power, and increasing the robust competition needed for a marketplace to function. We see evidence of this in Ambassador Tai’s approach to our trade priorities and relationships.” 

The report focuses on three themes present throughout the new trade agenda: 

1. Producing what matters: Trade policy should serve the emerging theory of economic growth rather than be pursued for its own sake. Future trade negotiations should focus on problem-solving around production challenges in specific sectors, aiming to deepen competition and promote sustainable economic development at home and abroad.
2. Consuming with purpose: The new strategy organizes American consumers to use their collective strength as a $3.8 trillion import market (the world’s largest) to push countries, producers, and importers to follow high-road practices. In other words, access to the US market is a privilege, not a right, and “consumption power” through trade enforcement is how the privilege is managed. 
3. Personnel is policy: Who serves in government and whom government consults are vital to good policy outcomes. Trade policymakers, career staff, and expert advisors should be willing and able to build on this new trade policy model and should reflect America’s full diversity.

Key contributors to the report include Felicia Wong, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute; Sameera Fazili, Roosevelt fellow and former deputy director of the National Economic Council; Cathy Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO’s International Department; Timothy Meyer, a former lawyer for the US State Department; and K. Sabeel Rahman, board member at the Roosevelt Institute and professor of law at Cornell University.

“We believe that now is the right moment to have a deep conversation about trade and how it fits in with the emerging US economic strategy,” writes Wong. “The COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, exploding inequality, and precarious supply chains have brought into question much of the received wisdom about globalization. The US has begun charting a new path with increasing bipartisan support, but the exact contours of this path are still ripe for mapping.”

As the US redefines its role in the global economy, the study commission’s findings highlight the urgent need to institutionalize these new values in American foreign policy. This report offers a blueprint for policymakers looking to build on the significant progress made under the Biden administration, ensuring that trade models continue to center sustainability and equity.