Hellenic Shipping News
President Biden has set out a sweeping trade agenda designed to restore the U.S. economy, U.S. leadership and U.S. partnerships. A legacy of unilateral action and global tariffs, however, will take time to moderate and require due consideration of the global economic reality, as well as a political balancing act. View the Biden Administration’s full trade agenda. This article discusses what you need to consider right now.
Shift in Tone and Focus
In his first 100 days, President Biden has outlined a trade agenda that diverges markedly in tone and focus from that of the previous Administration. The Trump Administration’s global tariffs on steel and aluminum remain in place, as does the focus on China, but the threats and implementation of dismantling or abandoning agreements are gone, replaced by a call for a common approach with U.S. allies and a strengthening of the World Trade Organization. There appears to be no rush to engage in new trade negotiations, with the Biden Administration indicating that it will move first on economic recovery and infrastructure investment.
President Biden has over the years engaged in a balancing act on trade. He has free-trade credentials, having voted for NAFTA in 1993 and pushed hard as vice president for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He also acknowledged decades ago, however, that the concerns voiced by organized labor and workers about job loss represented “a genuine fear” that would neither be erased nor exacerbated by NAFTA but rather needed to be addressed through enactment of stimulus investment—a policy he continues to embrace now.
President Biden has presented his trade policy as an integrated component of a broader vision, one designed to end the pandemic, prepare for future ones and invest in clean technologies.