On June 15th, at the National Press Club, Open Markets hosted an event focused on the future of US trade policy entitled, “The Next World System: Can US Trade Policy Make Us More Secure, Democratic, & Prosperous?”

Remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai

US Trade Rep Katherine Tai delivers remarks at Open Markets

There, U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai delivered a groundbreaking speech describing in detail for the first time how the U.S. trade agenda under President Biden is prioritizing resilience, competition, workers, and benefits for all in the global economy.

Ambassador Tai built on National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s recent seminal speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership.” In that April 27th talk, Sullivan charted a dramatic shift in U.S. thinking about how to use trade policy to promote a “new Washington consensus” that aims to “build capacity, to build resilience, to build inclusiveness, at home and with partners abroad.”

In her remarks, Ambassador Tai also nodded to Open Markets executive director Barry Lynn’s early and ongoing work on the close connections between fragile supply chains, the decline in competition enforcement, and the resulting threats to our economic security and democracy. Find relevant, supplemental readings HERE.

Highlights from Ambassador Tai’s remarks:

“Our global supply chains, which have been created to maximize short-term efficiency and minimize costs, need to be redesigned for resilience... and we are doing this in cooperation with our allies and partners, not at their expense…We are turning the colonial mindset on its head.”
"Pursuing...de-risking and resilience in supply chains is about improving our national security and economic security for working people. These are critical to taking down tensions in the world as well as anxieties at home, and also reducing opportunities for economic coercion."
“Healthy competition is key not only to maintaining vibrancy and innovation in our economy but also to promoting democracy. Trade policy has an important role to play in this regard.”

A Conversation with Tim Wu

In a conversation with Financial Times Global Business Columnist Rana Foroohar, Tim Wu, who led the creation of the Biden administration's competition and antitrust agenda, agreed that the U.S. can no longer sacrifice the resiliency of supply chains for the supremacy of the consumer welfare standard.

To address chokepoints, Wu made a call to consider using competition policy tools such as common carriage rules. To reform how we analyze mergers, examine deals in their complexity, rather than looking for another simple formula (as we did in turning to the deeply flawed welfare standard). Wu also stressed the point that breaking up monopolies has always made the U.S. tech sector stronger and more innovative:

“The U.S. leads & has led internet tech for decades because we broke up our monopolies. That’s our comparative advantage,” Wu said.

Panel I: How Real is President Biden's Pivot on Trade? What Might It Mean for America and the World?

Our first panel weighed in on the validity of Ambassador Tai’s remarks and the Biden administration’s pivot on trade: AFL-CIO International Director Cathy Feingold sees evidence everywhere that we are at a hopeful inflection point: people around the world are talking about what it means to implement “worker-centered trade,” she said. That applies to workers from those in manufacturing to advanced tech.

“It’s more clear than ever that labor and climate issues have to be on the table,” said Feingold.

Sabeel Rahman, who recently led OIRA and before that, the progressive think tank, Demos, indicated that much of the work of the Biden administration’s competition policy pivot is getting people in different agencies and fields of expertise to talk to each other. He pointed to the work the USTR’s labor advisory board has been doing on equity as a model for how that collaboration should look.

“This is a big shift in how regulators do their work. It’s a different orientation to crafting policy collaboratively,” said Rahman.

Similarly, Josh Tzuker, Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division spoke to how the Biden administration has revamped efforts to ensure bodies with trade and antitrust authorities are actively consulting with each other and working to create policies that last beyond a single administration.

While every panelist agreed that Biden’s pivot is real and substantive, they diverged on what the consequences of that pivot are for other nations: Renaud Lassus, executive director of the Institute Jacque Delors and former trade minister at the French Embassy in the U.S., shared European partners’ concerns about whether America is capable of making this trade pivot mutually beneficial, yet he praised President Biden’s ability to project a positive, collaborative message on competition and trade.

Panel II: Next Steps & Further Challenges on Supply Chain Security & Resilience

Our final panel, made up of supply chain expert, engineer, and author Christopher Gopal, U.S. Steelworkers legislative lead Roy Houseman, and Financial Times columnist, author, and Open Markets board member, Rana Foroohar, examined the challenges ahead for building secure, resilient supply chains. Each panelist emphasized that continued dialogue with American workers, substantial financial investments, and regulatory agility will be key to fortifying essential industries and protecting workers. USW’s Roy Houseman pointed to union leaders' close work with the Biden administration to protect the domestic steel industry as a model for those ongoing efforts, but he stressed that more needs to be done in the years ahead to defend and build on that progress.

Christopher Gopal warned against regulators and activists resting on their laurels. “A lot has been done…a lot more needs to be done,” he told attendees.

FT columnist Rana Foroohar, said discussions like the ones held during this conference laid the groundwork for this shift on trade and economic policy.

“One part is the narrative shift,” Foroohar said. “What we’re doing right here is narrative building.”

We thank all of our speakers for a highly engaging set of discussions on June 15th.

And the Financial Times for its support of the event.

With the right people at the helm, we believe the Biden administration will continue to steer the U.S. and the world toward a more secure, just, and prosperous (for all) economic system.