Brady Would Like MTB Renewal Before July Recess, India to Return to GSP

The top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee said the delay in extending the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program and passing a new Miscellaneous Tariff Bill “has real consequences for our businesses and families, especially right now.”

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas noted that some Democrats, including Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., wanted to add many requirements to the eligibility requirements for GSP, including environmental and labor standards, anti-corruption efforts and treatment of women workers.

Brady, who was speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies program April 15, said Republicans are open to examining eligibility standards, but “you really have to think about how these criteria work in practice. You don’t want them to become a barrier to eligibility.” He said GSP is for lifting developing countries up, and encouraging them to make steps toward two-way trade. He also said that he doesn't want GSP to require compliance with the Paris Accord because no domestic law enforces those pledges.

In response to a question, Brady said he supported the action to suspend India from GSP participation, but he also wants the country moved back into GSP if trade discussions are fruitful. “The potential for trade and partnership with India is sky-high, but they’ve often taken U-turns on trade that have been a little troubling,” he said. He said he remains hopeful India can return to the program.

He said he understood the argument that GSP revisions should include apparel (see 2009170043) for more than just the least-developed countries but expressed doubt that would ever happen. “My guess is it would be extremely difficult to expand in that area,” he said.

Brady, who earlier in the week announced his retirement from Congress at the end of this term, said being term-limited from becoming Ways and Means chairman again if Republicans regain the majority in the 2022 elections influenced his decision.

In a press call with reporters April 16, Brady expanded on his MTB comments from the previous day, when he complained about some members seeking to strike products at the last minute last year. He said that doesn't fit with the professional process of building MTB, guided by the International Trade Commission.

He said some members in both the House and Senate do not accept the ITC list, “but not a large number of them.”

“We are working with those few remaining members of Congress that have concerns on MTB. I really hope we can reach a resolution with them,” Brady said during the CSIS webinar. “My sense of Chairman [Richard] Neal is: he sees the importance of this, too, and timeliness matters.” Neal is a Massachusetts Democrat.

He said Democrats and Republicans on the committee “have not gotten into the specifics yet on GSP or MTB,” but he said Democratic staffers reached out to his staff this week. He hopes that's a sign that “we're going to get into that serious work.”

When asked if an MTB renewal could be done before the July 4 recess, Brady said, “I’d love to see this done by the Fourth of July if not sooner.”

In both his speech and the press call, Brady emphasized it's time to start discussions in Congress on Trade Promotion Authority, and expressed concern that the Biden administration is not making TPA renewal a priority. Brady wants trade negotiations with the U.K. and Kenya to continue, and for those agreements to come up for a vote in Congress, TPA would need to be in place.

Brady also said he hopes the U.S. trade representative builds on Phase 1 with China, which he said made “considerable inroads in preventing China from stealing our technology.”

“It’s not enough to just pause tariffs, I think we need to begin subtracting them, and the sooner we see a Phase 2 agreement or a multilateral agreement, we’ll start” removing Section 301 tariffs, he said. He said the tariffs worked to get the Chinese to accept enforceable provisions, and to open up their agriculture market, but they, and the retaliatory tariffs China imposed were “tough medicine” for the U.S. economy.

Brady was critical of USTR Katherine Tai's speech earlier in the day, saying she dismissed that developing countries that grow richer through trade put more emphasis in cleaning up their air and water. “It’s very difficult to worry about the Monarch butterfly when you go to bed hungry and you don’t have a roof over your head,” he said. “Trade should not be seen through a distorted lens that it's somehow damaging to the environment.”

He argued that reinvigorating negotiations at the World Trade Organization for an environmental goods agreement is the best way that trade policy can fight climate change. “Don’t make energy more expensive, make affordable energy cleaner,” he said.

Although he had ideological differences with Tai, he praised her as highly qualified. Brady said the overwhelmingly bipartisan vote for the NAFTA revision -- which she had a large part in achieving -- was one of the most rewarding things he's seen in his 25-year House career. “I confess I told Ambassador [Robert] Lighthizer there was no way to build that type of consensus,” he said, referring to the previous USTR. “We have a lot of momentum to build on there.”