Tai: Workers Priority in Trade Policy

The Administration is making US workers a top priority in ongoing trade talks through the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity and with Kenya and Taiwan, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Thursday.

“Through all of this, we have made it clear to our trading partners that workers are at the heart of what we do. And it turns out that we all want to build our middle classes,” she told a meeting of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

“The question is how can we advance trade policies that allow us to build our middle classes together,” she continued. “These are the voices that have for too long been left out of the trade policymaking process. We are committed to changing that. This is how we’re making trade policy now. If we want better results from our policies, and in particular our trade policies, we need better inputs. “

Change from Tradition

In her remarks, the top US trade official stressed that the Biden Administration’s trade policy represents a change from tradition.
“Over the years, our trade policy has contributed to our deindustrialization.,” she said. “We lost the ability to make many important things. We lost jobs, we lost communities, and we lost critical parts of what makes us secure. This is not okay, and that is why the Biden-Harris Administration is doing things fundamentally differently. Instead of continuing an unsustainable status quo, we’re now actively investing in our infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, and technological strength.”

“Our job is to make sure our trade policy works hand-in-hand with our investments and our industrial strategies, and does not undermine them.”

As Ms. Tai addressed union workers in New York, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his proposal to impose across-the-board tariffs on imports, although he declined to say how high he might hike tariffs.

“Some might call it economic nationalism, I call it common sense,” Mr. Trump said in remarks to business leaders at the Economic Club of New York.

“I won't name the percentage today but it will be a certain tariff percentage which will be higher than people had heard in the past.”