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**NOVEMBER 23, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Another Biden Cabinet Job to Worry About-U.S. Trade Rep

****

For several presidencies, including those of Obama and Clinton, the U.S.
trade representative has been keeper of the orthodoxy. U.S. policies
ignored the fate of domestic manufacturing. Instead, they pursued a
brand of globalism by and for multinational corporations, especially
financial ones.

Biden's USTR nominee will signal whether he is serious about
rebuilding U.S. industry and jobs. In previous pieces, I've reported
on the efforts

of two of the ultraorthodox candidates, Jennifer Hillman and Miriam
Sapiro, to get the position. That's probably not going to
happen-they are just too radioactive for much of the Democratic Party.

Two leading contenders are currently Katherine Tai, the lead trade
counsel on the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Jimmy Gomez of
California.

Politico recently ran a valentine to Tai, headlined "Everyone Likes
Katherine Tai
,"
which was heavily influenced by the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Tai indeed gets along with progressives. But as a staffer ultimately
responsible to Ways and Means Chairman Richie Neal, as corporate a
Democrat as it gets, she is trusted by corporate types as well.

They other contender heavily promoting himself for the job is Rep. Jimmy
Gomez. He was one of the negotiators in the revised NAFTA deal, known as
USMCA. But other than that brief stint, Gomez has no background in
trade.

Diversity politics will influence this pick. Gomez is Latino; Tai is
Asian American. Biden has a Latino problem, not a problem with Asian
Americans. If the political staff has a major role, Gomez is the more
logical pick.

Of the two, however, Tai would be a lot better than Gomez, who would be
at risk of being rolled by the corporate lobbies and their allies in the
USTR bureaucracy.

Still better would be two progressives being promoted by the labor
movement: Mike Wessel, a leading activist trade lawyer, and Thea Lee,
president of the Economic Policy Institute. These now seem long shots.

That's a pity. Trump's trade policy got tough with China mainly at
the level of belligerent rhetoric and scattershot tariffs, but not
coupled with any kind of industrial policy. The Biden administration
will either build on the new reality with a more coherent China and
industrial-strategy policy-or try to restore the old trade regime. A
Wessel or a Lee would focus on the former.

And USTR is only one of a suite of top positions that affect trade. For
more on that, click here
.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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