US Poised to Ramp Up Green Goods Exports, New Phase Coming for National Export Initiative, Say Officials

The World Trade Organization environmental goods agreement could be “critically important” for the growth of U.S. industry and the export of clean energy products, said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz during an Export-Import Bank Annual Conference panel on April 25. The markets for environmentally friendly products are currently forming across the globe and will likely take multiple decades to emerge, said Moniz. The U.S. aims to formally begin negotiations by June on the agreement that could eliminate or reduce tariffs on a wide range of energy products (see 14041724).

The energy products could in the coming years make significant contributions to the National Export Initiative, an Obama administration plan to boost exports, said Moniz. “In the last seven or eight years, we have gone … by building a market here, from 25 percent to over 70 percent of the supply chain for wind turbines now domestically manufactured. That gives us that platform, again, for an export market,” said Moniz. For solar products, "we have a similar issue," he said.

The pact may include such products as solar water heaters, wind turbines and water treatment filters that are currently part of a similar Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation agreement, said the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) (see 14012411). More than 11 million Americans rely on exports for jobs, said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, adding that pending trade pacts would significantly boost exports. The hundreds of millions of new customers add through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would help the U.S. agriculture industry surpass recent export records, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The TPP “has to be a good, solid agreement, which means that market access has to be far more open, particularly in Japan and Canada in terms of certain goods. That’s what has made this negotiation difficult,” said Vilsack. President Barack Obama and the Office of the USTR touted a “breakthrough” in recent negotiations in Tokyo over Japanese rice, beef and pork, wheat, dairy and sugar, but said gaps remain (see 14042428). Canada is also reluctant to concede more dairy and poultry, said USTR Froman in March (see 14031821). The U.S. must accelerate negotiations or other countries will seal deals without U.S. inclusion, said Vilsack.

Discussions with the European Union (E.U.), which is within the top five of agricultural trade partners with the U.S., is difficult because "it’s not really about market access," said Vilsack. "It’s really more about some of the regulations in the SPS that are very, very difficult. The Europeans continue to focus on geographical indicators, which is a problem for us.” Nearly half of the Senate in an early April letter requested the Obama administration demand removal of the geographical indicator regulations through a TTIP agreement, claiming the provisions would restrict names for dairy and other agriculture products (see 14040906).

The U.S. exported a record high $2.3 trillion in goods and services in fiscal year 2013, noted Pritzker. The Obama administration also plans in the next month to unveil the “next iteration” of the National Export Initiative, said Pritzker. The Export-Import Bank is critical to continuing to boost exports, said all three cabinet officials. “Ex-Im is an important partner for financing, and so obviously the administration supports reauthorization of Ex-Im," said Pritzker. "But we at the Department of Commerce see everyday how critical that is for us to help our companies get their products into foreign market.” The law that authorizes the charter of the bank, the official credit agency of the U.S. government, expires on Sept. 30.