Top US trade official sees progress in helping workers. Voters will decide if her approach continues

WASHINGTON — As US Trade Representative Katherine Tai is legally required to avoid discussing the presidential elections. But her ideas about fair trade are on the agenda vote in November.

Voters are essentially asked to decide whether it is best to work with voters rest of the world or threaten. Do they support pursuing worker protections in trade negotiations, as Tai has done on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration? Or should the United States raise taxes? almost everything it imports as Donald Trump has promised to do?

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

“You can’t do trade policy alone,” Tai said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I am convinced that the path we are following now is the right path. I think the only question is how much progress we can make in the coming years.”

It’s an approach that has drawn criticism from business leaders, economists and Republicans who say the U.S. has not made enough progress on new trade partnerships and countering the rise of China.

“There have been no trade deals, no talks to expand free trade agreements,” Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., said during a congressional hearing with Tai in April. “Compared to China’s ambitious agenda, the United States is falling behind in every region of the world.”

Trump says broad tariffs of at least 20% on all imports — and possibly even higher on some products from China and Mexico — would bring back jobs in U.S. factories. Most economists say they would hurt economic growth and increase inflation, although the former president has dismissed those concerns.

“If you come from a foreign country and you don’t make your product here, you’re going to have to pay a pretty substantial tariff, which will go into our treasury and lower taxes,” said Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. this year, said at a recent meeting in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Tai has degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School, but pursues a working-class perspective on trade. She said she once injected excluded union voices into the trade process.

The Biden-Harris administration has not rejected the tariffs. It kept China issues out of Trump’s presidency. It has imposed a 100% tariff Chinese electric vehicleseven though there isn’t really a US market for these vehicles which, without tariffs, only $12,000. Tai sees that as a way to protect an emerging industry from subsidized and unfair competition.

But the administration also wants to support American workers in the face of competition from China through other industrial policies, such as funding for computer chip factories and tax breaks for renewable energy technology.

The reality, according to some economists, is that domestic factories did not simply lose jobs to China. There were productivity gains that left some manufacturers needing fewer employers, and a broader shift occurred as more workers left manufacturing and moved into the service sector. These factors are often de-emphasized at Tai, says Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“She seems to be focusing on the easy issue – the one where you can blame the ‘bad guy’, China,” Lovely said.

There is unfinished work.

The trading pillar of the Indo-Pacific economic framework led by Tai remains incomplete. That effort by Washington and its allies in Asia is intended to counter China’s rise without the need for a trade deal, but puts more emphasis on workers’ rights and environmental protections than previous proposals.

“What I’ve discovered is that we all really want the same thing,” Tai said. “What we’re essentially doing is innovating the way you conduct trade policy, innovating the way globalization will play out in the future.”

Tai said she is trying to promote a trade policy with other countries that “allows us to build our middle class together and avoid pitting them against each other, because that is the model we have pursued over the past decades.”

William Reinsch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said it is not surprising that Asian countries involved in the initiative say they are supporting their middle-class workers. But he said Democrats have not provided the access to U.S. markets that trading partners want in exchange for a focus on workers.

“The consistent message we have received from Asian partners is that they are looking for tangible benefits, and the US is not providing them,” he said. “Trying to rearrange the traditional social order, no matter how meritorious that might be, can be an uphill battle.”

Tai sees herself as proof of concept that her approach to trading can thrive. It just happens to come from the Agreement between US, Mexico and Canadathe revised North American trade deal signed during the Trump administration and cited by Trump as evidence that he knows how to negotiate with the rest of the world.

In her interview, Tai said the agreement includes a “rapid response mechanism” that allows the government to penalize factories that violate workers’ rights. Tai said the US government had invoked the mechanism 28 times by the end of September and had completed 25 of those attempts.

Tai said this directly benefited 30,000 Mexican workers, who could choose their own union representation, allowing them to receive higher wages, back wages and other benefits.

“We are empowering workers through trade,” she said. “And by empowering Mexican workers, we ensure that American workers do not have to compete with workers in our neighboring country, who are being exploited and deprived of their rights.”

Praise for the agreement appears to be a rare point of convergence in trade between Trump and the Biden-Harris administration. But their perspectives are different. Trump is telling voters that his threats of massive tariffs could make foreign governments accept U.S. terms on trade and immigration.

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

Tai, who is barred from commenting on the presidential campaign from her office by the federal Hatch Act, is cautious in her comments. But she disputes Trump’s claim.

She notes that there have actually been two trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico. The first negotiations took place between the Trump administration and the other two countries. But the second was between Trump’s team and Democrats in Congress, who had to ratify the deal, which led to worker protections, an item Tai worked on when she was a congressional staffer.

But yes, she added, just getting a written agreement on trade protections and rights is never enough. The text must be supported by action.

“It’s just words on the page unless it’s implemented,” she said.