As they say, "personnel is policy," so let's talk about the personnel recently appointed to key staff positions at USTR, and think about what it might tell us about a Biden administration trade policy. The top position, of course, is Katherine Tai, and we don't know yet about her key Deputies, but nevertheless these staff positions could be informative.
Just to be clear, I don't know most of these people at all, and I'm mostly going to be trying to draw out some information based on their bios. I'm assuming that where they worked previously tells us something about their views. Also, I may do some general categorizing of people as, e.g., "trade critics" or the "trade establishment," but there are a range of views within each of these categories.
With those caveats in mind, here's a table of the USTR staff appointees who seemed most relevant for trade policy-making:
Person | Background |
Sirat K. Attapit, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Intergovernmental Affairs |
Director of Legislative Affairs for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. For whatever it's worth, some background on Becerra's trade views in a 2008 blog post I did is here. A lot of people seemed to think he was a protectionist; I wasn't so sure. He was clearly a critic of existing trade policy, but so was Obama, and it wasn't clear to me how far Becerra's criticism went. |
Jan Beukelman, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Congressional Affairs |
Legislative director for Senator Tom Carper. Carper seems relatively pro-trade based on this rundown. |
Ethan Holmes, Special Assistant to the United States Trade Representative |
Served in the office of Representative Ron Kind in a variety of positions, most recently as his Economic Policy Advisor. Kind is relatively pro-trade based on this rundown. |
Ginna Lance, Deputy Chief of Staff |
Previously worked in the Office of then-Vice President Joe Biden, where she served as the Director of Scheduling and Deputy Director of Operations. Began her career at the Department of Commerce in the International Trade Administration. |
Samuel Negatu, Director of Congressional Affairs |
Legislative Director for Representative Jimmy Gomez (CA). Served as a staff negotiator for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) working group, addressing labor issues in negotiations between USTR and House Democrats. I quoted Gomez here as saying: “To the Biden campaign directly I said ‘Do not run away from trade; lean in to trade. Leaning into trade is not only a way to build the economy but also, how do you protect workers’ rights? How do you protect the environment? How do you advance other goals instead of just looking at how much you grow the GDP of the country?” |
Greta Peisch, General Counsel |
Served as Senior International Trade Counsel on the Senate Finance Committee for Chairman Wyden since 2015. Previously, she served in USTR’s Office of the General Counsel, including as Chief Counsel for Negotiations, Legislation and Administrative Law. Wyden is relatively pro-trade. |
Brad Setser, Counselor |
Previously served in the Obama-Biden Administration as the deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis in the U.S. Treasury from 2011 to 2015, after having started the administration as the director for international economics on the staff of the National Economic Council and the National Security Council. I've never met Brad, but we've had some interesting twitter discussions, including a three day long marathon mainly focused on WTO litigation against China and non-violation claims. I don't remember all the details, but you can look it up if you are interested! |
Shantanu Tata, Executive Secretary |
Senior Policy Advisor to Representative Suzan DelBene and served as her primary advisor for trade issues on the Ways & Means Committee. Worked at USTR during the second term of the Obama Administration. DelBene is pro-trade. |
Jamila Thompson, Senior Advisor |
Served as deputy chief of staff for U.S. Representative John Lewis (D-GA) and a legislative assistant for Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA). Lewis' voting record suggests a bit of skepticism about trade. |
Nora Todd, Chief of Staff |
Chief Economic Advisor for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Legislative Director for Representative Mike Michaud (D-ME). |
Mark Wu, Senior Advisor |
Previously served as Director for Intellectual Property at USTR. Mark is the only one on the list I actually know, and I'm sure many of this blog's readers know him as well. I see him cited most for this article on China, but he has written a lot more about trade, so anyone wanting to discern his precise views has a lot of material to go through. My sense is that Mark is an establishment person with a number of specific criticisms of existing rules. |
What to make of all this? It seems to me that this list leans a bit more to the trade establishment side than to the trade critic side. However, trade establishment people have plenty of their own criticisms of existing trade policy, so I wouldn't necessarily expect the status quo from them. I don't have a sense of which direction the "establishment critics," if I can call them that, will go on most of the trade issues they will face.
The key Deputy positions are still to come, and they will probably tell us a bit more about the direction of trade policy under Biden.