[CTC] Tai calls on APEC trade ministers to take a ‘worker-centered’ approach

Fri May 26 06:54:33 PDT 2023

Tai calls on APEC trade ministers to take a ‘worker-centered’ approach
Inside US Trade, May 25, 2023 at 5:33 PM

DETROIT – U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai put labor concerns front and center in an event ahead of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trade ministerial on Thursday, calling on her counterparts to do the same in their discussions about trade policy.

APEC has never had “an accompanying worker forum, and I think this is a real oversight,” Tai said before introducing United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Frederick Redmond to an audience that included World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the trade ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, among others.

“APEC is known famously as an incubator of ideas. So, let's seize this opportunity, use this forum to drive real, tangible change through innovation for our workers,” Tai said.

The APEC trade ministerial kicked off later on Thursday with a meeting focused on issues related to the WTO, according to a copy of Tai’s opening remarks. Okonjo-Iweala attended the meeting. During a second meeting set for Friday, APEC ministers will turn their attention to “fully integrating the principles of sustainability and inclusion in our respective trade policies and our engagements with other trading partners,” Tai said in her remarks.

Tai’s message about the Biden administration’s “worker-centered approach” to trade is one she has delivered to diverse audiences across the country and, she noted during the event with Fain and Redmond, in bilateral meetings with counterparts from the around the world.

“For all of you who have had the opportunity – if not the pleasure – to have a bilateral meeting with me, you've heard me talk about the Biden administration's approach to trade,” she said, characterizing that approach as one that puts “the workers at the center” and recognizes “that workers have not been at the center for a long time.”

Fain and Redmond offered some concrete suggestions for what such a trade policy should look like, as well as observations on how trade policies in the past have negatively impacted workers.

According to Redmond, a worker-centered approach should “at the minimum include strong enforcement of ILO standards as it pertains to human rights and labor rights.”

While APEC members are party to the ILO’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, he said, “we continue to see forced labor in our supply chains and the use of violence to silence union organizing drives.”

“This is unacceptable if we're going to have a worker-centered trade policy that's going to be fair for everybody,” Redmond added.

Labor standards have been key priorities in trade initiatives launched by the Biden administration, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, which includes several APEC members. References to labor appeared in all of the ministerial statements on IPEF’s four pillars issued last September. A summary of U.S.-proposed text on the labor chapter in the trade pillar released earlier this month by USTR does not mention an enforcement mechanism but cites proposed provisions “to encourage corporate accountability where an entity violates local labor laws” and a mechanism “to maintain regular communication and cooperation on the implementation of the labor commitments.”

Fain, meanwhile, spoke about the importance of “reciprocity” in trade agreements, ensuring U.S. exporters are not subject to high tariffs compared to companies abroad exporting to the U.S., among other issues.

Australian Minister for Trade and Tourism Don Farrell, a former trade union president, lauded Tai for “the way in which you have dragged the trade debate back to where we think it ought to be,” that is, “how workers can benefit from trade agreements.”

New Zealand Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor, meanwhile, noted that his country was heavily reliant on trade and views trade as “the solution, not the problem.”

“We have to ensure that it's not ‘trade or workers’ rights,’ it’s ‘trade and workers’ rights,’” he said. “But we see sometimes that it does come down to one or the other.”

O’Connor, a member of his country’s Labour Party, said his government wanted to “encourage the utilization of multilateral fora" and called on his colleagues to consider whether worker-related concerns were better addressed via trade policy or domestic policies.

“How do we ensure that there’s a balance between trade policy and other policies within our own countries?” he asked the panel.

Tai acknowledged the conversation on Thursday was focused on trade, while contending the Biden administration was “addressing tax policy, addressing investments” as part of a broader effort to build the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out.”

She proposed a future conversation with O’Connor about the uneven impacts of trade.

“[O]ne question I would love to pose to you for later,” she said, “is trade has impacts. Some of them are great, but it does create displacements. And I’d be curious whether New Zealand has experienced displacements that have been hard for you.”

“That would be a good point of conversation for us as we figure out how to partner,” she added.

The WTO director-general contended that worker concerns always have been core to the multilateral body’s mission, citing language in the WTO Agreement preamble she described as a commitment “to enhance living standards, to help create employment and to support sustainable development.”

“What is surprising to me sometimes is the extent to which people perceive it as having walked away from what it was created,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “So, bringing it back to that purpose of being about people and being about jobs and better living standards, I think is very important.”

She called on the labor leaders to engage in discussions with developing countries wary of labor-driven policies they fear could hinder their development.

“Many are afraid that there has been a move from the kind of language they have heard before – about liberalizing, competing, etc. – now to this, what they think, is new language,” she said. “They are afraid that this is one more thing that's going to stop them from having market access.

Accordingly, she continued, “It might be good if there was a way for you to have some dialogue with not only the workers but even the government officials and the ambassadors from these countries, to have an exchange that can be reassuring that we're all on the same wavelength. Otherwise, we will meet quite a bit of resistance to this because it's not being interpreted in the right way.” -- Margaret Spiegelman (mspiegelman at iwpnews.com <mailto:mspiegelman at iwpnews.com>)
Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

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