Confirmation of Katherine Tai as the United States Trade Representative

March 17, 2021

Throughout her career, Katharine Tai has proven herself to be a tough negotiator and a dedicated public servant who cares deeply about how trade policies impact workers and their communities. Most recently, as chief counsel on international trade issues for Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, she played a key role in the USMCA negotiations between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration. She was instrumental in securing provisions that eliminated special deals for pharmaceutical companies and provided new enforcement provisions for the deal’s labor protections. The result of her commitment to fighting for workers resulted in a trade deal with modest improvements over NAFTA for working people in all three countries under this agreement. 

While the USMCA was an improvement from our past trade policies, we must do more to ensure that our trade policies raise standards for workers. Katherine Tai is the right person to reform misguided trade policies that have cost millions of good American jobs because she understands what unfair trade is doing to U.S workers and has a forward-looking vision of building a new trade model that benefits working people and our planet. Her expertise in trade policy combined with her ability to work across constituency groups will better position us to ensure a trade policy that is fair to U.S. workers.