In April, the Biden administration announced that the nation’s green trade policy will be overseen by the president’s special climate envoy, John Podesta, and not the once-again sidelined Tai. Podesta’s speech at Columbia University could hardly be labeled pro-trade – he condemned global trade as "a huge contributor to the climate problem."

But rather than airily dismissing CBAM as Tai has consistently done, Mr. Podesta said it was the Biden administration’s intention to "deepen dialogue with our partners and allies around the world, from the UK to Australia to the EU as it pursues its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism."¹⁰ For many EU officials, this was music to their ears.

Even in the corridors of the Winder Building headquarters of USTR, there is disenchantment with Tai. According to Politico, Tai was responsible for "pushing more than a half-dozen senior trade officials out the door."¹¹

Some USTR officials defend Tai and say that, while there has been extensive turnover at the agency, it was not necessarily the case that career officials would depart over a conflict with the boss. "Maybe people were ready for a change. Washington can be a grind," said one official.

But others say the sharp turn in policy with a focus on social, environmental, and antitrust issues has been a source of frustration. Much of this seems to flow from a lack of clarity of what precisely the administration’s "worker-centric" trade policy is designed to do.

Conclusion

Clearly the Biden administration and USTR seek stronger labor and environmental standards globally and including from countries with which it engages commercially. But how does the administration influence others to adopt policies in concert with their own? Persuasion, coercion, carrots, or sticks. At present, US trade policy offers no carrots and, while still the world’s most powerful nation, the United States no longer possesses the power to prod countries to adopt policies they believe contrary to their commercial interests simply because Washington wishes it so.

USTR no longer negotiates trade agreements. It holds seminars.

With the United States having disabled the WTO’s dispute settlement system, USTR no longer engages in meaningful litigation in Geneva.

It has proven incapable of delivering results with Europe or Asia. Its relations with Latin America are ambivalent. Its dealings with China are fraught. Its relationship with business is in shambles. Congressional leaders believe USTR’s performance is disappointing. The agency’s closest allies tend to be NGOs and members of Congress who despise trade.

This is not a scoresheet that impresses.

In early April, University College London and Hertford College at the University of Oxford issued a pamphlet in which a group of former diplomats and development experts called for the scrapping of that most exalted British Ministry, the Foreign Office. Its argument was that times have changed but the Foreign Office has not.¹²

The same argument can be made for USTR. If the path that Tai and her allies have staked out represents the long-term policy direction, then the agency must be reformed. It is simply not cut out for overseeing the implementation of labor and environment policies in other countries. It possesses no special expertise in human or civil rights. President Kennedy, his successors, and Congress had all mandated a role for USTR as the spearhead on trade. Yet the current USTR leadership has little interest in trade or those who engage in it.

Should the agency be abolished? Should it be broken up and its staff distributed to the departments of Commerce, Treasury, and State? Should its mission be radically redefined? What is clear is that USTR is an agency which has lost its way.