Episode 93: The US Trade Policy and America’s Role in the World Economic Order with Keith Rockwell and Stuart Harbinson

Global Economy Podcast

ECIPE

Business

4.2 • 5 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Fredrik Erixon talks to Keith Rockwell and Stuart Harbinson about the US trade policy and America’s role in the world economic order, specifically, how does the Biden administration think about trade? Keith M. Rockwell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. Before his retirement in June 2022, Keith served as a Director at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and spokesperson for the organization for over 25 years. He was responsible for the WTO’s interaction with media, business, civil society and parliamentarians. Before joining the WTO, Rockwell worked as a reporter, editor and columnist for 16 years at the Journal of Commerce. He also is Global Fellow at the Wilson Center. Stuart Harbinson had a distinguished career in public service in Hong Kong. From 1994 to 2002, he represented Hong Kong and then the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China at the WTO in Geneva. He subsequently joined the WTO Secretariat as Chief of Staff to Director-General Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi and then became Senior Adviser to Director-General Pascal Lamy. He has rich experience as a former Chairman of a number of WTO bodies, including the TRIPS and Services Councils and the Dispute Settlement Body. He was Chairman of the WTO’s overarching body, the General Council overseeing preparations for the launch of the Doha round and of the negotiating group handling the formative stages of the Doha negotiations on agriculture.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to ESOP's Global Economy podcast. My name is Frederick Erickson. And today we're going to talk about US trade policy. More specifically, what is US trade policy today and how does the Biden administration
0:22.6	think about trade and America's role in the world economic order?
0:26.6	In late April, Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, gave an important speech at the Brookings
0:33.6	institutions about renewing America's economic leadership and the key
0:38.3	tenants of Biden administration's view on international economic policy. To explain its trade and
0:45.1	industrial policy and how the US is revaluing its support for international trade rules,
0:51.2	Sullivan reached for the example of architectural avant-godism. He said,
0:55.8	in our quote, the way that we're going to build an international economic architecture is not
1:01.9	going to be with Parthenon-style clear pillars as we did after the end of the Second World War,
1:07.6	but something that feels a little bit more like Frank Gary, end quote.
1:13.5	Google Frank Gary, if you don't know who he is, and you will get a good image on what Sullivan
1:17.7	has in mind for the international economic architecture. For those of you, less interested in
1:24.1	forms and architectural imagery. The key message from Jake Sullivan was that the
1:29.1	administration will continue to seek new ways to boost industry and that is not going to lose
1:35.7	any sleep over its dismissive attitude to trade rules and the absence of any substantial
1:41.4	trade policy in America today. With me to discuss Sullivan's speech and help me to decipher U.S. trade policy,
1:48.8	I have two highly experienced experts, Keith Rockwell and Stuart Harbenson,
1:53.4	also published a blog on exactly this topic,
1:56.2	and we'll put a link to that blog in the show notes.
1:59.8	Keith was for many years the director of the information and external relations division
2:04.7	at the World Trade Organization and was its chief spokesperson.
2:09.8	He's now with the Wilson Center and the Inris Foundation.
	...

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