I'm Scott. I'm Bill. And where are the trade guys? You're listening to the Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm H. Andrew Schwartz and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reitch, the CSIS Trade Guys. This is Trade Guys Scott, welcoming you to this episode of the Trade Guys. We have the privilege of talking with Congressman Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from the first trade of Washington State.
She's a representative who sits on the Ways and Means Committee and we have a wide-ranging conversation with the Congresswoman on Trade Priorities for this year and the next administration. Thanks for joining us, H. Han, the Trade Guys. Welcome back to the Trade Guys. This is Scott. Bill will be here in a minute. He's part of the recording, just not speaking. This week it's our great privilege to have Congressman Suzan DelBene,
as a Democrat from Washington State. She represents the first district and the state of Washington in the United States House of Representatives. That district, if you can want to visualize it, is basically the Seattle suburbs north and east of Seattle. So the western boundary of her district is roughly in her state five. It contains a lot of trade dependent businesses and companies that engage with the world. Congressman, we're delighted to have you. Thanks for joining the program.
And we'd like just to hear a little bit about your district and about how things are going, what you're hearing from constituents, about the economy, about what's happening this fall, anything you'd like to talk about. Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. As you said, the state of Washington is very much dependent on trade. It is critical for our economy because more than 40% of our state's jobs are tied to trade in industries from agriculture
and advanced manufacturing to technology. We export products from digital goods and services to aircraft and trucks, as well as over $6 billion in agricultural products. We're mostly a specialty crop state. It also includes things like seafood and dairy. We also are a gateway to the Indo-Pacific, bringing in energy products, semiconductors, cars from around the world through our ports, and we're also exporting wheat, corn, and soybeans from the US. And then I'd say about 90% of our
states, 12,000 companies that export are small and medium-sized businesses. So we look at trade. We have big players, small players, very new technologies and services, agriculture and advanced manufacturing, all of that together. So we are definitely a microcosm of all aspects of trade. So I have to ask, is point Roberts in your district? It used to be through the last redistricting. I lost point Roberts, but yes, it was a key part of my districts. Believe it or not, I've actually
been there. Really? Yes, deliberately. For those of you that don't know your geography, point Roberts is this little thumb that sticks down near Vancouver, but it's the unusual part of the United States is it's because it's below the 54th parallel or whichever parallel it is. It's actually part of the United States, even though it's not connected to the rest of the United States. The only way to get there by land is to go into Canada and then back down into point Roberts. It's a very
odd little place. We have our separate border crossing at point Roberts, so it is a peninsula sticking off to the west of the mainland connection. About 1,300 people live there. And so it is a very unique exclave as we call them. There's just a couple of them in the US. We went through a lot of challenges as a result of COVID when the border was closed. I've been up there a lot and it's a great community. I can imagine. Well, that's just a side note. Let's get to the meat of the thing.
You're on the ways it means committee, which means you have a key role in trade and one of the things we're going to get to a little bit later is the congressional role in trade versus executive role in trade. But let's start with what you're expecting after the election, whether Trump or Biden wins. I guess the big question is, is it going to make any difference for trade? What do you see as a difference between the two? What do you think each of them is going to do if they win?
Well, I think there's some very clear differences on the trade agenda. Trump recently proposed a 10% across the board tariff proposal, which would cost the average American household about $1,500 annually. Folks are studying this because it's a pretty regressive proposal and would raise prices for folks right now when folks are struggling with higher prices. It would be higher prices for food, prescription drugs, for fuel. Trump has also proposed that we eliminate the income tax
and replace it with tariffs. Again, that would disproportionately impact the poor in the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy. I do think that it's important in trade policy that we have trade policy that helps support our workers, helps uplift the middle class. This has been a huge priority for President Biden to make sure that we are showing up our relationships with our allies and partners and using a more targeted trade approach with China. I do think there has been bipartisan
concern about the outsourcing of trade authorities to the executive branch. I think Congress has a key role to play in any type of trade legislation we do. I do think that it's going to be important the next Congress as well to make sure that we are reasserting our congressional authority and able to do trade agreements that include things like market access, true trade agreements that really can make a difference with all of our partners and really allow us to have robust negotiation.
But the Constitution grants Congress power over the regulation of foreign commerce. So we have an important role to play. Let's pursue that for a minute then and then I want to come back to, you said the magic word which is China. I want to come back to it but let's pursue the congressional thing for a minute. Congress passed the Taiwan bill that basically approved the first tranche of the Taiwan agreement and then told the president that Congress also had to
approve the second tranche of the Taiwan agreement which is not finished yet. So an assertion of congressional authority which is what you were talking about. Yes. Do you think that's going to continue or do you think we'll see that from Congress in general or on other specific trade agreements? How do you think Congress is going to approach the issue? When we have a trade agreement that has binding commitments, it is critical that it goes through Congress. Like you said,
that's a bipartisan issue. It sometimes is harder to work with Congress. The final product though, I'd say is much better and more durable when we have congressional approval and input. Otherwise, we end up with executive agreements that aren't enforceable or it could be ripped up by a future administration and that doesn't provide the stability and certainty going forward or the same
economic benefits. So generally, I'd say that means they can be worse for workers, work for businesses, worse for our ability to improve worker rights and environmental protections in partner countries. So absolutely, I think that we wanted to make sure we were showing our authority in the Taiwan example that you brought up. But I think it's going to be very important that we continue that. And again, that we have long term binding commitments. Now, do you think there's much of an appetite
for a general grant of what we used to call trade promotion authority? The last grant was adopted by Congress in 2015. So it's been a while since we've taken up the subject. We hope that there would be some a lot of agreements covered up by that 2015 authority and it turned out just to be the USMCA. So what do you hear from your colleagues? What do you hear from constituents on the idea of a general grant of negotiating authority? Well, I do think that it's going to be really important
if we have any type of trade promotion authority. Usually it begins from the executive branch that requests for trade promotion authority. So I do think that what the parameters of that might look like, etc, would be very important for a Congress to decide how they would proceed. But if we're going to be doing important negotiations on trade, then I think that would be likely to come up in a
future administration and hopefully with a Congress who is willing to engage. But it's hard to know what the specifics of that might be like until we see what the request would be from the executive branch. Well, picking it up on that, one of the things that hasn't happened in the Biden administration has been the negotiation of free trade agreements. You know, we have IPF, we have APEP, the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
We have supply chain agreements, we have at least one critical minerals agreement, we haven't seen any FTAs. Do you think this is just a peculiarity of this administration or is this now a trend? Are we headed into an era where you're just not going to see that anymore? And instead we're going to have partial things like supply chain agreements or maybe sectoral agreements rather than larger bilateral or plural lateral free trade agreements? Well, I actually think that many in Congress and
myself included want to make sure that we are negotiating full FTAs. We've talked about it even more recently with countries like Taiwan or Kenya or the United Kingdom. I think that it's critical because if we're really going to do something that is enforceable, commercially meaningful in terms of market access and stable, we need to have it negotiated with Congress. So if you avoid Congress, you could rip it up. It may not be long term. You're not going to get some of the concessions and
negotiation that's really important to getting a true FTA in place. Top Democrats on the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance recently called for FTA with Kenya. So I do think there is a desire to do that. It can be hard, but we saw with USMCA that we can do it even in difficult
circumstances if we bring folks to the table and folks are committed to getting it done. So I do think for making sure we have long term strong agreements that really encompass all sorts of industries and areas of our economy, it's important that we look at a true FTA. Well, that's really refreshing to hear because I know your companies and farmers want market access commitments. They don't want nice warm words and gee, that was a fun meeting. Well, usually
it's ag. The ag is someone you can stuck. Right. The ag guys want the commitments. Yeah, right. They're always the last to get their issues resolved. Actually, you can help me out with some research. Here, I've been talking to a reporter who's doing a story on agriculture trade. We were talking about that and I made the point that we've now slipped into a deficit on ag trade in the last couple of years. And he asked me why and I didn't really have any good answer. Is this something that
the committee has looked at at all? I mean, I know the chairman of the subcommittee is big on agriculture exports. Well, I think truly when we talk about market access and the ability to negotiate these agreements, having kind of all of these things on the table helps with negotiations in particular on agriculture. So in the absence of doing them, doing more of a framework without that commitment
can make it a lot harder. So I do think that to make sure we do a great job on ag too, that's another reason why market access being brought into the table, the commitments that would require Congress to be part of that process are very important. And so I hope again that we make that a priority. Well, I saw your committee did act on trade a month or so ago in passing a GSP renewal bill and several other, a Dementimus provision and several other provisions. But I also noticed that
it wasn't a bipartisan effort. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What do you think its future is? GSP is really a critical foreign policy tool. We need to renew it. And I think there's bipartisan agreement that we need to renew it. Trade adjustment assistance is also foundational to our trade policy and provides job training benefits and other supports to American workers
who could lose their jobs due to international pressures. When trade adjustment assistance and GSP expired a few years ago, we talked about making sure we renew both both GSP and TAA to make sure we have a lifeline for workers. It's been critical for thousands of workers in my state, but it's critical across the country. Republicans have really refused to engage on trade adjustment assistance as well. I'm not sure why we can't do both together. I think we could easily pass that. I think
trade adjustment assistance is a strong important program. And I think renewing GSP is a strong important program. So it seems like there could easily be bipartisan cooperation there. But at this point, Republicans have not been interested in renewing trade adjustment assistance. And that's been the problem. Do you see any action on a goa anytime soon? I mean, I hate to see that go down to the wire. Everybody keeps giving speeches about how we need to renew a goa. It's the African
growth and the opportunity to act. Yes, absolutely. That was for our listeners. I know you know what it is. Our listeners may not know what it is. I have this sinking feeling that you know, it's going to be two weeks before it expires. And then something's going to happen. Are you optimistic about earlier action? It expires in 2025. So it's coming up. It's unfortunate that we are in this place without
having renewed or renewing it had a time. It's really hard to imagine things getting through, given how challenging this Congress is on the House side. You know, they've called it the do nothing Congress. And there hasn't been a lot of interest in legislating, unfortunately. And when I say legislating, I mean, passing things through the House, the Senate and getting it to the President's desk. So my hope is that we could find a way to get there. But I think that is a challenge at this
moment. But it's important that we find a way forward. I just don't know how fast that's going to be. But it's got to be a top priority if it doesn't happen now. Hopefully something that can happen at the beginning of the next Congress. As I recall, your district contains not just a lot of constituents who make their living in the international marketplace and are for international commerce.
But they also tend to have a strong support for measures that protect the climate. With net zero and climate change being a topic that comes up a lot on this program, do you see there's waste work with our trade agenda at accomplished things that will help achieve US commitments or will the conflicts get in the way? For a long time in the trade world, we thought it's all subsidies that distorted trade were bad. And we turned out we talked to our friends in the green community and
they say, well, no, some subsidies are good hours in particular. So how do we solve this? What appears to be a conflict? What do you hear from your constituents? You know, I actually think there has been strong support for making sure we're prioritizing clean renewable energy and making sure we're thoughtful about the policy we put together to get there. You know, we obviously passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the most significant federal investment in American history
to tackle the climate crisis. And that work is already helping to lower greenhouse gas emissions because we're investing billions of dollars to reduce emissions across steel, aluminum, and other carbon intensive industries. And as we see businesses investing in cleaner production processes, it's been important for us to think about how foreign competitors might take advantage of that if they have weaker environmental regulations and are able to produce things more cheaply
because they're not using those same clean production methods. So I have proposed a carbon border adjustment legislation. Really, this is a way to impose a carbon border fee on imports that are not produced with the same clean processes and less carbon intensive processes that folks are starting to use now more and more. The EU has already passed its own version of this. Many other countries are moving towards this idea with different proposals. This is a bipartisan
idea. We have Republican Senators' Bilkacity and Lindsey Graham introduced the Foreign Polutrophy Act that would also impose a fee on imports. I've introduced legislation with Senator White House. Again, it's called the Clean Competition Act. And the key here is to make sure that as we see our producers move to clean production that they aren't undercut by foreign producers who are not living up to those same standards. You know, you have an advantage. This is editorial here.
Your bill and Senator White House's bill, I think, have the advantage of being more likely to be WTO compliant than the Cassidy Graham bill, which is for us a good sign. We're big believers in the WTO and multilateral rules. One of the odds of any of these things passing. What we see is Congress moving slowly in the direction you're talking about, but the pace might best be described as glacial. Do you think anything's going to happen this year or next on any of these bills?
You know, I think right now, because lots of these are more recently introduced piece of legislation, we're really helping educate folks about what this process would mean. What carbon border adjustment is, how it would work, having those discussions, because we want to make sure that we build support for this so that we're in a strong position as we enter to the next Congress. Even folks like Trump's former U.S. Trade Representative Bob Leith Heiser, as well as our current
U.S.TR Catherine Tye support this concept, it would raise tens of billions of dollars. So, I do think there is a lot of opportunity to be optimistic that we could find bipartisan support, but right now, I think it's important to continue to educate folks on how this would work, and also understand what is happening internationally, because we want to help kind of set what the future rules might look at. So, it's important that we are actively engaged and moving as quickly
as possible. One of the rather snarky comments going around, is that of course this is something that Trump will support. It's about tariffs. You don't have to tell him why the tariffs being put into place, you know, it's the tariff. So, therefore, it's good. Maybe we'll have a better chance getting it done. If Trump's for it, then maybe the Republicans will leave for it. I wish you well
with it. It's been a long time coming, and you're quite right. The Europeans and others are ahead of us, and that is going to create an awkward situation for our companies, because they're going to have to comply with everybody else's rules, and we're not going to have any. Yeah, being the last mover has real disadvantages. It does. I say that's true on the digital side too, on issues like privacy.
We need to be moving, because this is an opportunity for us to not only help set the rules of the road, if we don't have domestic policy, it's hard for us to really be out there talking about what international policy should look like. So, in the digital space, I'd say that's another area where we need to move much more quickly. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Scott and I have both
ranted about that in the past. The administration seems to be engaged in a pause in his thinking on this, and I think our view has been that if you've got global champions, which we do, and you have we have experienced with one of them, Microsoft, if you've got global champions, it's probably good to help them out, and support them. In part, because we think that the alternative is seating ground to their Chinese competitors, which we're not sure would be a good thing.
We've had this leading industry since its inception. The industry leaders continue to place the trail and advancing technology, and yet our regulators seem to be willing to let others take the lead, and just makes no sense. Yeah, we have to step up on this. I think it's very important. I think that,
you know, we have a digital chapter in USMCA. Obviously, that was important. It's got to be part of all agreements going forward, because digital is a key component, and it's not just the tech industry. Digital is part of all industries, and setting the digital rules is critical broadly for the economy. So we absolutely need to be more active here. Otherwise, we are going to see folks like China, move forward, which much more of an authoritarian model, or we're going to see folks like the EU
establish rules the road. And as you said, we have the innovators. A lot of this is US technology and US innovation, and so we should be actively involved in leading the way. Well, you're absolutely right that this is a total business issue. And indeed, many small enterprises would not be able to serve international customers, were it not for the underlying communications and information technology. So absolutely right. Bill, you have a last question?
Maybe more than one. I said we'd come back to China. So I do want to come back to China. It's one area where I think that the two presidential candidates are really not that far apart in terms of how to approach China. The relationship, not only economic, but geostrategic, has been getting worse rather than better, which has a lot of people worried, worried about Taiwan, worried about Chinese aggressive actions in the South and East China seas, but also worried
about trade and the deteriorating trade relationship, big softball here. And how do you see the US China trade relationship? Where do you see it going? Are the two presidents really heading in the same direction on this or do you detect a difference between the two? First of all, I think it's incredibly important that we are engaged here. China is one of our largest trading partners.
It's also very true that China has repeatedly flouted the roles of trade and conducts itself in a way that represents a true threat to our nation's economic security. We've seen forced labor, lower environmental standards, forced technology, transfer subsidies that knocked out aluminum industry that actually impacted my state,
where we had a smelter that had to shut down. You will likely see more legislation to limit China's access to the US market and to make sure that we are working in conjunction with our allies, because this is an area where we can't act alone. But we also still have an important relationship, and we're going to have to find the path forward, making sure that we are clear in our expectations,
making sure we have enforceability and protecting key investments. And again, it's going to be really important as we move forward that we are working with our allies around the world, because I think that sends a much stronger message and really creates much stronger rules going forward if we are doing that with many others.
Congressman, when you've been very generous with your time in the middle of a session day or Washington, I hope we haven't kept you for many important work, but thank you for taking the time to join us on the program. And you're welcome to make a parting rant if you choose. So, Bill and I usually take turns, but we'll give you the option for concluding remarks. Thanks for letting me join you today and bring it up point Roberts. I'm honored that you know and
have been to point Roberts, but these are really important issues. They're critical to our economy, and it's critical that we are actively engaged and involved with our partners around the world. Trade is important to our overall relations. It is part of our soft power also.
So, as we continue to engage with folks around the world. And frankly, as we brought up China, to provide other options for other countries in terms of economic partners, it's important that we're engaged, and that Congress needs to be involved so we have long-term enduring relationships. So, all things we talked about, this is all going to be very, very important, and I'm hoping we can work together and make important progress here.
Well, I'm at optimistic note. We'll thank you, say goodbye and tell our listeners that next week, we are taking a holiday because it's the 4th of July, and so we will be back the following week with the next edition of the Trade Guys. So, thank you everybody, and thank you, Congresswoman, for joining us. To our listeners, if you have a question for the Trade Guys, write us at tradeguys at csis.org. We'll read some of your emails and have the Trade Guys react to it.
You've been listening to the Trade Guys, a CSIS podcast.