Two ITC Nominees Named; CPA Slams Republican Pick
President Joe Biden nominated Jim Coughlan, the Export-Import Bank's general counsel, and Haile Craig, a Republican nominee, for the International Trade Commission on Nov 21.
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Coughlan was a senior staff attorney at the ITC, a legal counsel for Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and was a partner at Holland & Knight.
Halie Craig, policy director for technology on the Republican staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, previously was the senior trade staffer for free-trade champion Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. She worked at Meta, Facebook's parent company, and a think tank between her two stints on the Hill.
The Coalition for Prosperous America asked Senate Republicans to sit on the nominations, and wait until Trump takes office to fill the ITC seats.
They complained that Coughlan has represented foreign companies in Section 337 cases, but said Craig is "an especially concerning nominee," given her opposition to Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs, and her work for Toomey, who they called "a long-time opponent of tariffs and proponent of globalist trade policies. Her positions are fundamentally at odds with the needs of American industry and workers."
“We need warriors in all trade positions, including the USITC, who are willing to stand up for American industry, enforce tariffs, and defend against predatory trade practices,” CPA CEO Michael Stumo said in a press release.
On Twitter, Stumo endorsed an analysis from Matt Stoller, who works at Economic Liberties, a left-of-center think tank that also employs long-term free trade skeptic Lori Wallach.
He called the pair of nominations "an interesting Mitch McConnell/Ted Cruz move to screw Trump before he gets into office."
He noted that Craig was critical of steel and aluminum and China tariffs, but said that wasn't the only head-scratching part of the announcement. "Normally these nominations take a long time to move through the process, with a hearing and floor time scheduling taking four to eight months. Why do it now when it can't possibly work? I'm guessing that McConnell and Cruz have asked Schumer if they can have some sort of special deal between the two of them to hope that the Senate just confirms her without anyone else noticing. And the way they'd do this is by pairing her with a Democrat named James Coughlan, who is the husband of Kamala Harris's campaign chief of staff. So it seems like some sort of political trade, we'll put a Dem establishment person and you put an ex-Toomey person on there, then Trump can't get his trade agenda through when it comes to areas under the ITC's jurisdiction," Stoller wrote.