This episode is dedicated to the trade deals you haven’t heard about. Sometimes called mini or skinny deals, over the last few decades the U.S. has made over 1,200 of these agreements. These deals cover a range of issues, vary in scope, are often not made public, and rarely go out of force. They have one thing in common: all are initiated by the Executive branch and enacted without a final “thumbs up” from Congress.
Trade Adjustment Assistance is set to expire July 1, with no signs to date that Congress will soon act to renew it. Grant Aldonas is back on Trade Matters with part two on “adjustment.” Aldonas discusses Trade Adjustment Assistance and the components necessary for what he would call a true adjustment assistance program, one that addresses the broader challenge confronting workers and fosters nimbler and more proactive responses to change.
How do we adjust to a competitive global economy and define the challenges facing workers? Grant Aldonas, former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, discusses what he calls a misdiagnosis of the problem, political constraints on changing the conversation, and the need to review domestic policies that can be obstacles to economic mobility. Part one of two on “adjustment.”
Has the parlance of trade kept up with changes in the way trade actually happens? Phil Levy, Chief Economist at Flexport and former White House and State Department economic policy adviser, joins us to discuss this gap, why it exists, and how it relates to public expectations about what trade agreements can and should accomplish.
How the U.S. should engage in the Asia-Pacific region will be high on the trade policy agenda for the incoming Biden administration. Wendy Cutler, Vice President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, draws on her long career as a U.S. trade negotiator to explain what’s at stake in the region, what the future may hold for U.S.-UK and U.S.-Kenya trade negotiations now underway, and how CPTPP member countries view the potential return of the United States to the agreement.
The world trading system is at a turning point, and the role of the World Trade Organization is at the center of the discussion. Clete Willems, Washington lawyer and former White House trade advisor, makes the case for reforming the WTO across all three of its pillars: negotiations, implementation and monitoring, and dispute settlement, and points to a critical alliance to move the system forward: the US and EU.
U.S. small businesses are major beneficiaries of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), a U.S. program that allows eligible developing countries to export certain products to the U.S. duty-free to spur economic growth in those countries. The program expires on December 31, 2020. Dan Anthony of The Trade Partnership and Coalition for GSP discusses the rationale for GSP, the issues at hand for Congress, and what’s at stake if it expires.
Most global trade in goods moves by sea—but what makes that possible? U.S. Navy Admiral (Ret.) James Stavridis walks through the global network of naval forces that supports international trade and discusses the linkages between this system and national security, power and prosperity.
In the US-China Phase One Deal, China agreed to make 57 structural changes that improve market access for agricultural goods. The majority of those changes have been implemented. U.S. Chief Agricultural Negotiator Ambassador Gregg Doud discusses the significance of these changes, what it took to reach an agreement, and why he describes the deal as “historic.”
Salman Ahmed, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and project editor of a new report on Nebraskans’ views of foreign policy, discusses the report takeaways—including what surprised him most about Nebraska. The project was designed to test assumptions about how U.S. foreign policy interacts with the economic wellbeing of the middle class and bring heartland voices to a debate that is typically influenced by coastal cities.
Darci Vetter, Vice Chair of Agriculture, Food and Trade at Edelman and former U.S. Chief Agricultural Negotiator, explains why food security depends on the free global movement of food, how Covid-19 has impacted food supply chains, and how protectionist actions can backfire. She also discusses the U.S.-China Phase One trade deal and raises an issue in U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade that she believes looms even larger than USMCA implementation.
