Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Lays Out Trade Agenda

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, laid out sweeping changes to U.S. trade policy she'd like to see, touching on fast track, free trade agreement negotiating principles, labor enforcement, tariff sunsets and a border carbon adjustment tax. Warren, who published her trade agenda July 29, said the current trade policy is dictated by multinational corporations. "Those big corporations have gotten rich but everyone else has paid the price," she wrote.

Warren said she would limit fast track to trade agreements that all the advisory councils unanimously endorse, and the advisory groups would be reformed to have more labor, environmental and consumer groups than industry voices. She said that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative would publish negotiating drafts rather than keeping details secret until an agreement is reached. She described the current system, wherein trade groups get access to details before the public does and some former USTR negotiators go to work for trade groups, as "undemocratic and obviously corrupt."

"With certain important exceptions, we live in a low-tariff world," Warren wrote, so free trade agreements are more about establishing regulatory standards than lowering tariffs. So, she said, our trade policy should be used to make sure that other countries have high labor, environmental, tax and anti-corruption policies. She laid out nine preconditions, including being on track to reduce emissions under its Paris Climate Accord goals, having no fossil fuel subsidies, enforcing the right to collective bargaining, and combating tax evasion and avoidance.

She also said any country on the currency monitoring list -- currently China, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam -- could not have a new FTA with the U.S. This would rule out either rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, having a Japan FTA or having one with the European Union. "Shamefully, America itself does not meet many of these labor and environmental standards today. I am committed to fixing that as President," Warren wrote. While some of these goals would require a majority in Congress to achieve, Warren said that in trade, the president has a lot of power to act unilaterally. "When I’m elected, I intend to use it," she said.

She said that she would impose a border carbon adjustment for imports from firms that manufacture with carbon-intensive processes, because she is afraid that companies will move production to countries with the weakest greenhouse gas regulations.

She said there would be enhanced border inspection for imported food, which would need to meet domestic food safety standards. She would renegotiate existing agreements to remove investor-state dispute settlement, and not have ISDS in any new agreement. An independent commission would be set up to investigate labor violation complaints, and if one of the commissions recommended that the U.S. bring a case, the government would be required to do so. "I will also fix the problem that arose in the Guatemala case by pushing to remove language from our deals that require us to show that a violation of rights was 'sustained or recurring' and 'affecting trade or investment,'" she wrote.

Warren, who has said she will vote against the new NAFTA because of its biologics provisions, said, "I will never use America’s leverage to push another country to extend exclusivity periods for prescription drugs. I will support efforts to impose price controls on pharmaceuticals. And I will actively seek out opportunities to reduce exclusivity periods in our existing trade deals in exchange for securing other changes that will help America’s working families."

She said duties that protect domestic industries -- such as Section 201 and antidumping duties -- would be reviewed every six months, and they would be lifted "if companies can’t demonstrate the benefits of the duties are going to their workers."

Simon Lester, a trade scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, said Warren's preconditions mean there would probably be no new trade agreements during her presidency With regard to the review of duties, he wrote, "That seems like it could be hard to demonstrate, so maybe trade remedies will be a little harder to maintain."