International Agenda--A Quarterly Update from the International Division

Myron Brilliant, Senior Vice President, International Affairs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Dear Colleagues:

Level the Playing Field for Trade | Fight Isolationism | Champion Innovation and Intellectual Property | Align Trade, Regulatory and Competition Policy | Shape the Agenda for Energy and Climate Change Policy

As Tom Donohue noted in his recent State of American Business address, over seven million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began. Ten percent of the U.S. workforce is unemployed—a number that soars beyond 17 percent when you add those who have stopped looking for jobs and the millions of part-time workers who want to work full-time.

No priority facing our nation is more important than putting Americans back to work. That’s why the Chamber is calling on all Americans to unite around the ambitious goal of creating 20 million new jobs over the next 10 years. With 20 million jobs, we can re-employ the unemployed and meet the needs of our young people and a growing population.

International business presents some of the clearest opportunities for job creation, as senior Obama Administration officials have acknowledged. The rationale is clear. The American consumer’s credit cards are maxed out. The same is true for the federal government.

Several months ago, and again in the State of American Business address, the U.S. Chamber called for a national goal to double U.S. exports within five years. It’s achievable — we’ve done it before, and we nearly did it in the five years ending in 2008. The Chamber applauds President Obama’s statement in the State of the Union address on January 27 when he too called for the U.S. to double exports in five years. We’re pleased the White House is listening, but that’s not enough. We just need an effective strategy to open markets and help us compete in the new global economy.

Following is a discussion of the U.S. Chamber’s international priorities for 2010, with some highlights from 2009. We scored some important wins for the business community last year, but we are even more excited at the opportunities we face this year.

1) Level the Playing Field for Trade

First, the Chamber is committed to leveling the playing field for international business by lowering barriers to trade and investment. Last year, the Chamber was Washington’s leading voice calling for a robust trade agenda. We helped secure Congressional approval of legislation to modernize Trade Adjustment Assistance and a one-year extension of the Generalized System of Preferences and the Andean trade preferences. We also helped win ratification of the U.S.-France tax protocol, and our U.S.-India Business Council made notable progress toward opening India’s insurance, defense, legal services, and commercial space markets.

In the year ahead, we will continue to press vigorously for Congressional approval of the pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. We appreciate President Obama’s remarks last night to strengthen our trade relations with these three countries; well, now is the time to act! President Obama should exert leadership and call on Congress to pass the pending trade agreements. Washington has been sitting on these for far too long and the U.S. is losing out of opportunities to create jobs. 

We could not agree more with President Obama when he said, “If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores.”  That’s right Mr. President! The rest of the world is not waiting around for the United States. Countries are busy making their own arrangements with each other that threaten to leave U.S. companies, workers and farmers at a competitive disadvantage.

South Korea, for example, has inked a free trade agreement with the EU, and Colombia has concluded an agreement with Canada. If those plans go ahead while Washington delays, an estimated 380,000 more Americans will lose their jobs.

We will press for a commercially meaningful Doha Round agreement and for a high-standard Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, within a reasonable period of time. Congress is set to take up reform of U.S. trade preference programs, and we’ll be active on that front.

The Chamber will make the case for new treaties to avoid double taxation, in particular with Brazil, the largest economy with which the United States has no such agreement. We will work to remove the impediments to Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and we will work with the Commerce Department to improve U.S. trade promotion programs to help small businesses export.

2) Fight Isolationism

Second, the Chamber will continue to fight economic isolationism, including undue restrictions on investment, procurement, exports, sourcing, and human capital. Last year, we faced new calls in Congress for "Buy American" rules in a number of bills. We secured a partial victory in seeing these rules amended in the Recovery Act, but these improvements were insufficient, and we are still pressing regulators to ease their approach to these damaging provisions. We'll continue to oppose "buy local" mandates in U.S. and foreign procurements in the year ahead.

On a different matter, in a letter from Chamber CEO Tom Donohue, and 18 other association CEOs, to Secretary Clinton and four other Cabinet officials, we communicated the U.S. business community's growing alarm over China's ongoing indigenous innovation policy push. The Chinese government has promulgated a series of “indigenous innovation” programs as part of a long-term plan that threaten to exclude a wide array of United States firms from a market that is vital to their future growth and ability to create jobs here in the U.S.  Additionally, we rallied the business community globally to successfully turn back China’s push for “Green Dam” filtering software. And in India, we helped companies win the right to sell remanufactured goods and helped reverse measures harming the international express delivery sector.

In the year ahead, the Chamber and the Obama administration will work together on export control modernization. The aim is to strengthen U.S. national security by prohibiting foreign sales of truly sensitive technologies while simplifying or eliminating controls where they serve no real security purpose — or, as Defense Secretary Gates has put it, to ensure controls with "higher walls for fewer items." We'll also press for ratification of the defense trade treaties with the United Kingdom and Australia.

We'll work to end unilateral sanctions that close foreign markets such as Cuba to U.S. exporters. We're hopeful a bill lifting the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba and permitting cash payments for agricultural sales to the island will advance this year.

3) Champion Innovation and Intellectual Property

Third, the Chamber will champion innovation and intellectual property as vital for creating jobs, saving lives, and advancing economic growth. We had success last year in building an international consensus against measures to weaken intellectual property in an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We've also helped push forward the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), negotiations for which continue under the Obama administration.

In the year ahead, we will continue to oppose efforts to weaken IP rights in international fora; hopefully see a successful conclusion to the ACTA negotiations; and work to improve IP laws, regulations, and enforcement in key countries around the globe.

4) Align Trade, Regulatory and Competition Policy

Fourth, the Chamber will press to align trade, regulatory, and competition policy to ensure open and competitive markets, which is the primary goal of the Chamber's Global Regulatory Cooperation project. Too often, governments are using regulations, standards, investment rules, and competition policy to favor state-owned enterprises or promote national champions. The result is that U.S. companies are placed at a competitive disadvantage in global markets.

We were pleased that in 2009 we won the support of senior officials at the Department of Justice to press for procedural fairness in antitrust cases abroad, and the administration is now backing our efforts to advance these labors in APEC and the OECD. We have framed robust action plans for these organizations and are hopeful that we'll make progress this year. We also welcomed the EU's Revised Impact Assessment Guidelines, which take account of the impact regulation has on trade and investment in a more pro-business fashion.

On investment policy, we've provided extensive input to the administration's review of the U.S. model bilateral investment treaty (BIT), including our advocacy for measures to address the challenge posed by competition with state-owned enterprises. Unfortunately, the United States badly lags its trade competitors in the race to open foreign markets and protect investment through BITs. As a result, American companies are increasingly placed at a competitive disadvantage in rapidly growing emerging markets. We anticipate that review will conclude soon and hope it will facilitate the negotiation of more such treaties, including with China, India, and Vietnam.

5) Shape the Agenda for Energy and Climate Change Policy

Finally, we are working to shape the global agenda for energy security and climate change policy to promote American competitiveness. Echoing President Obama, we've opposed the inclusion of unilateral border measures in U.S. cap-and-trade legislation; the Chamber agrees with the White House that such measures could violate U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO) and elicit retaliation. Also in 2009, we were pleased that our organization helped secure approval of U.S.-U.A.E. civil nuclear cooperation agreement.

In the year ahead, we will continue to oppose the inclusion of WTO-violating border measures in climate change legislation. We will also continue to press for free trade in environmental goods and services, an area of particular strength for U.S. industry. In addition, we will strive to enhance international energy security through diversification of supply both at home and abroad.

*  *  *

We have an ambitious agenda and we have not done justice to the breadth of the work in a short summary.  But clearly, the path forward for the U.S. economy — and the best way to create those 20 million jobs we’ll need by 2020 — is through more engagement in the worldwide economy.

I want to assure you on behalf of the Chamber that we are committed to working across the globe to advance America’s economic interests.  In this regard, we have made a significant investment to add human resources this year in our European, Middle East and other shops. 

We are excited about the work ahead and look forward to our continuing engagement with you all. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or my colleagues in Washington if you have questions or if we can be of assistance.

Best regards,

Myron Brilliant
Senior Vice President, International Affairs
U.S. Chamber of Commerce