Arrogant Demands Have Consequences – Mass Exodus as U.S. Trade Staff Hit Dead Ends and Unwilling Cooperation
A story surfacing in Politico about the collapse of the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the inability of the entire trade policy group to find any willing trade partners was entirely predictable.
You might remember how the insufferable U.S. business media constantly said the Trump trade team was not going to be successful because the administration was disliked by global trade partners. Every Trump trade approach from tariffs to section 301 compliance, to U.S. demands around foreign policy tied to the economic Trump Doctrine was decried by U.S. multinational corporations as too divisive, too intransigent. However, Donald Trump and his trade wolverines racked up more trade wins and established more trade agreements than any administration in history.
From KORUS (Korea/US) to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan, European energy deals, massive changes with China, new Ag agreements, demanded technology sector investment back in the USA, and the successful renegotiation of NAFTA (Canada, Mexico, USA) into the USMCA – all of it was stunning in scale, scope and success. Trump’s global trade success was exactly the opposite of every predictive declaration by the professional media. All of the Trump strategic policy shift created the framework for the largest domestic expansion of the U.S. economy, evident in every 2019 economic metric prior to the pandemic.
Biden took office with the full support of the lying liars who lie in the media, and they said Biden’s team was a shoo-in for success. Again, exactly the opposite has happened.
The ideological leftists who came with the Obama/Biden plan forcibly tried to push their Green New Deal policies into every trade agreement. The result and response from all U.S. trade partners has been a massive failure of epic proportions.
Despite the international pontifications around support for the globalist energy policies, ie. the “Build Back Better” bulls**t pushed by western government, the World Economic Forum and the globalists, when it comes to where the rubber hits the road no nation is willing to attach themselves to the economically destructive millstone demands of U.S trade. In material fact, many of the BBB agenda priorities are now completely rejected by the same politicians who promoted them.
In part, we in the USA are suffering through some of the most horrific inflationary economic outcomes from this Biden ‘Green New Deal’ program. Any nation that aligned itself is feeling the same impact in direct proportion to how close they followed the program. The more ‘Green’ compliant the nation, the more the economic hardship upon the citizens within that nation. This is just the non-pretending reality of the thing.
So, it doesn’t come as any great surprise to see a thoroughly rejected and dejected career trade group now walking to the exits with zero accomplishments for their last three years of effort.
WASHINGTON – Frustration with a stalled trade agenda and unhappiness with the leadership of President Joe Biden’s trade chief is pushing more than a half-dozen senior trade officials out the door, according to four current and former administration officials with knowledge of the departures.
The exits include the White House’s point person on international economics and two of the three deputy U.S. trade representatives responsible for implementing the Biden administration’s “worker-centered” trade policy.
The exodus comes after Biden’s trade agenda ran aground on multiple fronts in 2023: failing to reach a green steel and aluminum deal with the European Union and pulling out of trade talks that were part of the U.S.-crafted Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in November. The administration, meanwhile, remains internally divided on other key trade policy decisions, like how to regulate digital information flowing across the globe.
Those headwinds — and the realization that little real progress is likely to be made in an election year during which former President Donald Trump will put a glaring spotlight on trade — have convinced some officials it’s time to move on. Adding to the frustration: simmering discontent with the management practices of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
[…] Biden’s “worker-centered” trade agenda was designed to smooth over frayed relations with close trading partners and win back those blue-collar workers in battleground states. But his sweeping plans to reshape global trade rules haven’t assuaged concerns from Democrats who worry that Trump will again use trade issues as a cudgel against them in the industrial Midwest — a region that could determine control of Congress and the White House in November.
That disconnect has forced USTR to freeze, abandon, or dramatically scale back its signature initiatives and negotiations, leaving some top lawmakers and staffers frustrated. In particular, Wyden and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are fuming that the administration hasn’t matched the Trump administration’s accomplishments on trade, like the binding labor and environmental standards that Democrats got inserted into the rewrite of NAFTA that Trump signed in 2020.
“Sen. Brown and I have consistently said that you need the kind of proposal that you saw in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement where you open up markets for business and you have tough enforcement,” said Wyden, “and a lot of what’s been put up doesn’t meet that test.” (read more)
Go figure!….
Want success?…
Want trade deals that lift the USA economy?…
Want USA “deflation,” yes, the actual lowering of prices for goods and services?…
Want lower costs of goods, and lower prices for consumers by leveraging the size of the USA market?…
…..Get Donald Trump Back in Office!
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