Chamber Officials Call for Restarting Kenya, UK Trade Talks
U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials that lead the group's international policy initiatives said again that the U.S. is wasting an opportunity by letting trade negotiations stall. The vice presidents in charge of Africa, Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Asia policy spoke on a Jan. 18 webinar that was a follow-up to the State of American Business program.
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Scott Eisner, senior vice president for Africa, noted that as Congress looks at the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which expires in 2025, they will see that it has been very beneficial for building wealth in Africa but hasn't done as much for U.S. companies looking to sell into the continent.
Eisner said the most significant trade development in Africa is the African Continental Free Trade Area, and that the U.S. should support African countries as they negotiate customs duties and digital chapters. He asked: "How do we bring down barriers at physical borders?"
He also said, "I think we need to still move forward with the FTA with Kenya."
The other free trade negotiation that was started under the Trump administration and has languished in the past year is an FTA with the United Kingdom. Marjorie Chorlins, the Chamber's senior vice president for Europe, said, "We've got to see a re-start of the U.S.-U.K. talks. This should be an easy negotiation to get back to; a lot of ground was covered previously."
She praised the administration for finding a path to resolve the Boeing-Airbus subsidies dispute, and for finding a solution to the tariff war caused by Section 232 tariffs on European steel and aluminum. But, she added, "It’s one thing to resolve outstanding disputes, it’s another to move forward on new agreements, on how to manage emerging technologies and things like that."
She said that the U. s.-EU Trade and Technology Council needs to arrive at "tangible outcomes." She said, "We’d like to see progress on a joint European-U.S. approach to China’s unfair practices both at home and abroad."