Tighter Regulations, Better Workforce Training Highlighted at Export Council
Strong trade deals with high standards -- on topics like labor and the environment -- combined with streamlined regulations are crucial to ensuring U.S. exports continue to grow, President Obama told members of the President’s Export Council at their March 12 meeting. The President said his administration was “modestly optimistic” an EU-U.S. trade deal will be successful, because austerity measures across Europe have made the continent realize it needs an “aggressive trade component. They are hungrier for a deal than they have been in the past.” Obama said there are areas where the U.S. and EU can narrow differences on customs and regulations, but the deal will still be a “heavy slog.”
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Many speakers at the meeting stressed the importance of streamlining and strengthening trade regulations -- in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, forthcoming EU-U.S. negotiations and U.S.-Canada trade facilitation efforts -- and effectively training American workers as the key to continued export growth. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk also stressed the need for strong intellectual property rights, encouraging meeting attendees to do educate the public that “if we give away our work product, we just don’t have a future.” Kirk said the USTR has been seeking strong IP rights in every trade agreement, yet “I think we are failing miserably in the public debate about the importance of protecting our intellectual property rights.”
The Council approved 10 letters of recommendation at the meeting, on topics such as doing business in Africa, reducing agricultural barriers in the TPP, workforce readiness and Canada trade facilitation. Council member Denise Morrison, president and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company presented that letter, which commended the President for the Beyond the Border initiative and encouraged him to formalize the stakeholder process. She said the two countries were finding duplications -- of an imported Asian ingredient inspected by both British Colombia and the U.S., for example -- and the countries are working to “allow for a mutual recognition of each other’s standards.”