Excerpts from Testimony of Ambassador Katherine Tai Before the House Ways and Means Committee Hearing on the President’s 2024 Trade Policy Agenda

WASHINGTON - Today at 10:00 AM ET, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai will testify before the House Committee on Ways and Means on President Biden's 2024 trade policy agenda. Ambassador Tai will highlight how the Biden-Harris Administration's trade agenda is supporting economic growth from the middle out and the bottom up by empowering workers both at home and abroad, rebuilding American manufacturing, and strengthening the resilience of U.S. supply chains.

The live webcast will be accessible on the House Ways & Means Committee website.

Excerpts of Ambassador Tai's remarks are below:

Our Administration's economic plan is leading our country in the strongest economic recovery amongst all developed nations. More importantly, we are doing so in a way that democratizes economic opportunity for more people.

We have shifted the conversation from focusing on the bigs to including and championing the interests of the smalls and the mediums. From trickle down to bottom up. From people as consumers only to people as workers also.

We are reorienting the economic system to strengthen the middle class.

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Trade is a tool to give all Americans a fair shot and ensure that our system is set up for inclusive and durable growth. Promoting healthy competition is critical to achieving this goal. This is why I am honored to serve as a member of the White House Competition Council, to align our trade agenda with our domestic economic tools to advance fair competition for more people.

It is also a critical tool for building robust supply chains that lower costs for American families, a goal I work to advance as a member of the President's Council on Supply Chain Resilience.

Asking old tools to solve new challenges-like economic insecurity, fragile supply chains, and a worsening climate crisis-is destined to fail. We must question assumptions, revisit norms, and think creatively and strategically.

In this new era, we increasingly measure success and progress by the degree to which we are delivering real benefits to more Americans across our society-no matter where you live or whether you have a college degree.

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First, we are using trade to empower workers, because they are the backbone of our economy. Their success is our success.

We are incentivizing a race to the top so that we are not pitting our workers against those in other countries and regions. Fellow trade ministers tell me that they too want to build their economies from the middle out, and enacting and maintaining high labor standards is key.

This is why the United States has prioritized strong labor commitments in our ongoing trade initiatives, including in our negotiations with Kenya and Taiwan.

As part of this process, USTR has consulted extensively with labor stakeholders, in addition to the business community. We will continue to work with our trading partners and with you to ensure that our trade agreements work for workers.

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U.S. agricultural exports totaled $174.9 billion in 2023, and our Administration has won over $21 billion worth of new agricultural market access in the last three years.

However, this is more than just numbers. It is about people, their livelihoods, and their communities.

People like the first-generation farmer I met in Rowesville, South Carolina. I met him last December together with Congressman Clyburn at his farm where he grows corn, soybeans, cotton, and small grains.

Families growing almonds, like one my Chief Agricultural Negotiator, Doug McKalip, visited in the Central Valley of California last fall.

This family was impacted by India's retaliatory tariffs imposed in 2019, limiting their access to a vital market for their operation. We removed those tariffs and provided more economic certainty for this family and many others.

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Increasingly, we are seeing that a sense of growing economic insecurity is shared by different communities across continents, and people everywhere felt this more acutely during the pandemic.

Lives and livelihoods, homes and communities were disrupted. This is why reducing dependencies and vulnerabilities and strengthening supply chains is a major priority for USTR this year, which informs our work as part of the President's Council on Supply Chain Resilience.

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We have seen the People's Republic of China (PRC) create dependencies and vulnerabilities in multiple sectors, harming American workers and businesses and creating real risks for our supply chains.

This is why we are taking a serious look at how our existing tools are addressing this problem, including through our four-year review of the China Section 301 tariffs.

This is also why I am closely reviewing the Section 301 petition I received from the five national labor unions regarding the PRC's acts, policies, and practices in the critical maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sector.

Our economic relationship with the PRC is complex, and as the President said, we want competition with China, not conflict.

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