Trade Policy Recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration

By
CTC
– December 8, 2020Posted in: Breaking Issues
Citizens Trade Campaign has published its recommendations to the Biden-Harris transition team on how the incoming administration can advance a new model of trade policy that creates good jobs, raises wages, reduces inequality, prevents climate catastrophe and otherwise ensures strong, healthy and resilient communities across the United States and beyond.

Our cross-sector coalition believes that a new direction on trade is needed both to achieve the greatest success possible from the President-elect’s “Build Back Better” economic recovery, COVID-19, racial justice and climate plans, and to win over a public largely skeptical of policymaker promises when it comes to trade agreements.

CTC is urging the Biden-Harris administration to:

  • Firmly reject the failed trade model of the past by halting Trump-era trade negotiations with Kenya, the United Kingdom and within the World Trade Organization; prioritizing the creation of a new model of trade agreements in partnership with Congress and civil society organizations; and renegotiating existing trade agreements to conform with that new model.

  • Restore U.S. manufacturing capacity, protect worker rights and improve U.S. resilience by strengthening labor standards, rules of origin, public procurement, currency and enforcement mechanisms,
  • Defend a livable future and create green jobs by prioritizing climate action in trade policy, including through the adoption and enforcement of strong, cross-border climate standards and an end to investor-state dispute settlement.
  • Eliminate trade rules that drive up the costs of medicine at home and abroad, especially in the face of the COVID crisis, waiving trade-related intellectual property rules for vaccines, treatments and other medical technologies.
  • Protect family farmers and consumers alike by defending strong food safety and consumer right-to-know measurers and supporting the movement for supply management of agricultural production.
  • Safeguard the ability to regulate the digital economy by rejecting trade proposals that restrict consumer privacy measures, offshore service-sector jobs, help corporations evade legal liability and that obscure algorithm biases.
  • Facilitate transparency and public participation in trade policymaking by publishing and soliciting public comment on U.S. trade proposals before suggesting them to other countries and by publishing negotiating documents in as close to real-time as possible.
A more-detailed copy of CTC’s recommendations is online here.
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