I'm trying to understand the core trade principles of the Biden administration, and I'm a bit puzzled. Based on various statements by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and others in recent months, I would have thought the dominant view was that trade liberalization had gone too far, and that we need to make sure there is "resilience," which appears to mean more production of key goods and services in the United States. And along the same lines, their position seems to be that we need more "policy space" or "regulatory autonomy" or "sovereignty" or "protectionism" or whatever your preferred term is here.
On the other hand, I came across these recent remarks by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo:
My team and I have also had numerous conversations with our EU colleagues, including executive vice president Vestager on key tech issues. These include the European Union's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Acts. The EU wants to use these pieces of legislation to create a fair, transparent and safe digital space. But we have serious concerns that these proposals will disproportionately impact US-based tech firms and their ability to adequately serve EU customers and uphold security and privacy standards. We understand the proposals are moving quickly through the EU's legislative process. But now more than ever, we encourage officials to continue listening to our concerns by stakeholders before finalizing their decision.
Thus, in contrast to the general direction of scaling back on international intrusion into domestic policy-making, here we have a key Biden administration trade official pushing back against a measure that simply "disproportionately impacts" U.S. companies. The problem is, if you look deeply at most domestic laws and regulations, they are likely to disproportionately impact someone, in terms of either national treatment or MFN treatment, so this is a pretty intrusive approach to the trading system.
Now, obviously, the U.S. approach could simply be, "we can do these things but others can't." But that isn't likely to have much success in the long-term, and I'm interested in whether they have something in mind in terms of what core principles they would like to see in the trading system. What do they see as the scope of the non-discrimination principle? Would they go beyond non-discrimination, and if so how far? What do they think of "market access" as a concept?