The outgoing USTR did her part to shape how the modern Democratic Party looks at trade.
The Biden administration is on its way out the door this weekend, and with it will go Katherine Tai, its United States Trade Representative (USTR). Her tenure was notable for the transformational way it characterized the work: “a worker-centered trade policy,” as she often described it. It’s an approach that delivered big trade enforcement wins for workers, including the pre-emptive application of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
USTR was also notable for what it did not do: No free trade agreements were proposed or negotiated during her term, a welcome respite for factory workers pummeled by decades of free trade that decimated American manufacturing.
The Biden team knew what it was getting when it picked Tai. Prior to becoming President Biden’s USTR, she worked as Congressional staff and was instrumental in getting enforceable labor standards included in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that went into effect in 2019. Specifically, the USMCA included a “Facility Specific Rapid Response Labor Mechanism” (RRM) that allow workers in all three countries to hold corporations accountable when they move production offshore in search of unfairly cheap labor, and permits the U.S. government to take enforcement actions against individual factories that deny workers the right of freedom of association and collective bargaining under Mexican law.
The U.S. under Tai’s leadership has since invoked the rapid response mechanism dozens of times, and in many cases it’s worked, helping Mexican workers fired over union activity get their jobs back. That’s important, Tai has argued, because an exploitable Mexican workforce pressures American workers, too. Her office saw the link between trade and labor rights, and established the RRM as a tool that USTR will pick up.
At home, she’s made it a point to demonstrate that trade policy is a concern of all Americans. She or members of her office visited all 50 states, engaging with not only industry representatives but labor unions and advocacy groups so that myriad points of view were pulled into her decision-making.
That effort took her to Coatesville, Pa, where she backed steelworkers’ efforts to keep open the oldest continuously operating steel mill in the country amidst waves of unfairly traded imports.
It brought her to influence President Biden’s decisions to maintain and in some cases expand Section 301 tariffs on an array of unfairly traded Chinese imports on products like semiconductors and EVs.
It brought her in November 2023 to visit with AAM and Detroit-based watchmaker and goods producer Shinola to celebrate the 10th anniversary of AAM’s annual Made in America Holiday Gift Guide.
It even brought her to the offices of AAM last fall, where she spoke about the importance of strong domestic supply chains. Her office turned all this stakeholder feedback into a hefty set of policy recommendations on how to leverage U.S. trade enforcement tools to promote supply chain resilience; excellent proposals for the incoming Trump administration to consider as it works to bolster the American manufacturing sector.
Finally, it’s brought her to a conclusion regarding an investigation her office undertook into unfair and anticompetitive practices in the Chinese shipbuilding industry that have kept American maritime industries grounded. The forthcoming report will set up the Trump administration with the backing it needs for actions to help rebuild this important manufacturing sector.
“We rewrote the rules on trade and expanded who it works for,” Tai said recently on one of her office’s social media channels. “We stopped it from being a tool for the rich to get richer, and turned it into a tool that lifts workers and grows middle class everywhere.”
We hope her efforts will be durable, and we thank her for her leadership in lifting up workers and helping to transform the way the Democratic Party thinks about trade policy.