U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has selected Katherine Tai, the chief trade lawyer for the House Ways and Means Committee, to serve as U.S. trade representative, four sources familiar with the decision said Wednesday. Tai, 45, who won the backing of congressional Democrats, labor and business circles in recent weeks, played a key role in negotiating stronger labor provisions with the Trump administration in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal. The role is a Cabinet position within the Executive Office of the President and the Senate will vote on whether to confirm Tai for the position. Biden’s selection of Tai, who is Asian-American, reflects his promise to choose a diverse Cabinet that reflects the makeup of the country. Tai currently is the top Democratic trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee and oversaw trade enforcement for China during the Obama administration. As an Asian-American, she is the latest diverse figure expected to be named to a Cabinet-level post in the incoming Biden administration. If confirmed as Biden’s “trade czar,” Tai would be the first woman of color and first Asian American to hold the role of top U.S. trade negotiator. Her name surfaced as the leading contender for the job earlier this month, as reported by Reuters. Biden is expected to formally announce Tai as his top trade negotiator soon, said one of the sources. As POLITICO reported last month, Democratic trade leaders in Congress coalesced around Tai soon after the election, regarding her as a skilled negotiator who has the experience to fulfill that goal. Her position was strengthened by Democrats’ thin five-vote majority in the House. That made pulling out a member to serve in the White House more difficult, particularly after Biden earlier this week settled on Representative Marcia Fudge to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. California Representative Jimmy Gomez was also considered for the United States Trade Representative Office (USTR) job and had conversations with the Biden transition about the role in May, according to a person close to his office. Tai recommended the lawmaker, among other names, to the transition as a potential USTR in the spring. Biden’s pick will be responsible for repairing economic ties with allies chastened by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars, inheriting a trade war with China, put on pause by an interim trade pact in January that left many of the hardest issues unresolved and U.S. taxes remaining on US$360 billion in Chinese imports, and re-energizing manufacturing at home. Tai will have to decide whether to continue trade talks with the U.K. and Kenya started by Trump’s trade chief, Robert Lighthizer. She’ll also have to weigh whether to lift hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs on metals and consumer goods that Trump imposed on China and allies like the European Union. Domestic industries and foreign governments stung by the trade war are already pressuring the Biden transition for tariff relief. But the president-elect has said new trade talks will take a back seat to securing domestic stimulus. He has also said that he wants to review Trump’s trade policies on China before lifting duties. Biden has promised to bolster the “Buy American” program that directs federal agencies to source products from domestic suppliers. That could upset allies in Europe. Born in Connecticut and raised in Washington, D.C., Chinese-American Tai is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School. She speaks fluent Mandarin and taught university English for two years in Guangzhou, capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, Tai worked at a handful of law firms including Baker & McKenzie and Miller & Chevalier. She clerked for U.S. District Courts in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, before her career at USTR began in 2007 as an associate general counsel. In 2014, she was named chief counsel for China trade enforcement, overseeing disputes between Washington and Beijing at the World Trade Organization. She left that role in 2014 to join House Ways and Means and was named to her role on Capitol Hill in 2017. Tai’s experience on the Hill may also prove useful when a major bill, the Trade Promotion Authority, will expire next summer, setting up a possible legislative fight. As the top trade staffer at Ways and Means, Tai handled negotiations last year with the Trump administration over a revamped North American trade deal. Under pressure from congressional Democrats, Trump’s trade team agreed to strengthen the pact to make it easier for Mexican workers to form independent unions and demand better pay and benefits — decreasing the incentives for U.S. firms to move south of the border to take advantage of cheap and compliant labor. Tai played a key role in negotiating trade policy for Democrats in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which came under Trump’s administration. The USMCA replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was approved under President Bill Clinton. The USMCA was signed by Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in 2018, and then Congress approved the trade agreement earlier this year after Democrats added stronger labor rules. Tai was the main attorney litigating trade violation cases against China before the World Trade Organization, an experience that will guide her as she works to hammer out the next phase of a trade agreement with China. In August, Tai called for a different approach to China from the 2-1/2-year tariff war waged by current trade czar Robert Lighthizer, arguing that the United States needed a better offense than tariffs, which, she said, were largely defensive in nature. “I think the offense has got to be about what we are going to do to make ourselves and our workers and our industries and our allies faster, nimbler, able to jump higher and able to compete stronger,” Tai said. Tai is considered a problem-solving pragmatist on trade policy, which often breaks down into an ideological divide between free traders and protectionists. News of her selection was welcomed by Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate. In a letter to Biden on Nov. 24, California Democratic Representative Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and nine other female House members praised Tai’s “experience and diplomatic abilities’’ and said she is “uniquely qualified’’ to deal with Canada and Mexico on the USMCA and with U.S.-China trade tensions. Senator Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called Tai “an inspired choice” and urged the Republican-controlled Senate to process her nomination as quickly as possible. “Ms. Tai has the experience she needs to succeed as USTR, and her record of getting wins for American workers demonstrates she knows how to champion the values that matter to U.S. families,” Wyden said. “She worked closely with me and my staff to craft the strongest ever protections for American workers in a trade agreement, and pass them into law with bipartisan support.” David Skillman, a senior associate at the Arnold & Porter law firm who worked closely with Tai when he was chief counsel to the head of the House trade subcommittee, said she would do well leading USTR as it faced coming challenges. “Katherine has terrific policy chops and great political skills, but more importantly, she’s just unflappable. The next USTR has a very tough road ahead of her, and Katherine has the ability to bring people together to make progress,” he said.(SD-Agencies) | 