In an annual report about intellectual property challenges around the globe, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative praised progress at the United Arab Emirates, and repeated concerns about dozens of countries' weak enforcement and policies it says are barriers to U.S. businesses. China, India, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Venezuela spent another year on the USTR's "priority watch list" for intellectual property violations, while Algeria moved to the lower-intensity "watch list."
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard many bipartisan complaints about the pain of both Section 301 tariffs and Europe's retaliatory tariffs in response to steel tariffs, but stood her ground on both during a hearing in front of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai published a readout of video calls she had with the leader of AstraZeneca's U.S. business and Pfizer's CEO on whether there should be a waiver of the World Trade Organization's agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The readouts did not say what either the government or companies' positions are on a TRIPS waiver, and during a background call on aid to India to combat its surge of cases and deaths, an official also sidestepped a question on the waiver. The readouts said that Tai “emphasized her commitment to working with WTO members on a global pandemic response, including the role of developing countries in any effective solution that addresses critical gaps in global production and distribution of vaccines”; and that the Pfizer CEO also wants to improve global access to the vaccine, and he discussed “how trade policy could help address the challenges of increasing vaccine production and distribution around the world.”
At a webinar on U.S.-Vietnam economic relations, Ambassador Ha Kim Ngoc said Vietnam is working to narrow the trade deficit with the U.S., whether by buying more American agricultural exports or encouraging Vietnamese businesses to open factories in the U.S. "I don’t think we can solve the problem overnight, with COVID-19 and the increased demand of the goods from Southeast Asia, and particularly Vietnam," he said April 27.
The U.S. should lead the charge to reopen the Environmental Goods Agreement in Geneva, House Ways and Means Republicans wrote April 22, on Earth Day. This follows a resolution introduced earlier in the month by four pro-trade Democrats calling for the same thing (see 2104080050).
Clete Willems, a former Donald Trump administration trade staffer, told the Senate Finance Committee that technology sales to China help pay for research and development here, so as Congress considers how to bolster the semiconductor industry, it should also be sure not to put export controls on goods that are not sensitive.
Former U.S. negotiators for the Environmental Goods Agreement at the World Trade Organization say the collapse of talks in 2016 means trying again with the countries that are major players in solar panels, wind turbines and the like is not likely to be productive this year. Mark Linscott, former assistant U.S. trade representative at the WTO, said he thinks even getting the fisheries subsidies deal done in Geneva this year is “dicey.” He recalled that it seemed promising when a plurilateral approach was taken on EGA, and China, when it was in the rotating chair at the G-20 group of nations, it pushed for a ministerial statement on the EGA that said it had found a landing zone, and the countries would “aim to conclude ... an ambitious, future-oriented EGA that that seeks to eliminate tariffs on a broad range of environmental goods by an EGA Ministerial meeting to be held by the end of 2016.”
Beth Baltzan, a former Democratic trade counsel at the House Ways and Means Committee and career staffer in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, has been named a senior advisor to USTR Katherine Tai. “She understands the connective tissues in our economy and I look forward to leaning on her expertise and guidance as we shape a worker-centric trade policy,” Tai said in a statement announcing the appointment. Baltzan has testified before Congress that the World Trade Organization hobbled trade remedies (see 1905220038) and has been critical of the impulse to lower tariffs as the primary approach of trade policy (see 1905220038).
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai's conversations with her counterparts from Italy and the Netherlands addressed global overcapacity in steel, according to summaries of the video calls released April 16. The administration has suggested that Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel cannot be removed until overcapacity has been addressed, even when the countries subject to those tariffs are not dumping steel or aluminum in their exports to the U.S.
The chief trade counsel for the Democratic majority on the Senate Finance Committee, and Joe Biden's former head of economic and domestic policy when he was vice president have been nominated as deputy U.S. trade representatives. Sarah Bianchi, who works at Evercore ISI, and senate staffer Jayme White were named by the White House on April 16. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., White's boss, called both “top-notch” choices, adding, “I am excited to see these nominations move forward as soon as possible.”