Rather than tackle new bilateral or regional trade deals, the AFL-CIO would like to see the USTR make more of an effort at the WTO to strengthen rules against currency manipulation and abusive labor practices and take on newer issues. | Getty | Getty AFL-CIO: Time to break the mold at USTR

Union officials who could hold the key to putting Hillary Clinton in the White House want her to break the mold for the job of U.S. trade representative by choosing someone more concerned about strengthening American manufacturing than negotiating new trade deals.

“We don’t think that’s the kind of person we’ve had in that position over the past several decades,” Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff for the AFL-CIO, told POLITICO. “I think there’s been sort of a misconception that if that person takes care of corporate interests, than everything else will fall into place. It’s another version of trickle-down economics.”


Clinton has already decided trade is one area where she will break with the policies of President Barack Obama, who is fighting an uphill battle to win approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership before leaving office. Instead, she’s signaled her primary focus will be on enforcing past trade deals.

That’s an important message to union groups, whose help in turning out the vote could be decisive in preventing Donald Trump from capturing the White House by winning key industrial states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan that Mitt Romney lost four years ago.

Still, many supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders remain suspicious of what Clinton will do on trade, given her support of the TPP while Obama’s secretary of state and her role in helping win approval of trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama in 2011.

Clinton's choice of Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate reinforced those suspicions, since he voted last year to give Obama “trade promotion authority” to finish the TPP agreement, even though most other Democrats were opposed.

“For far too long, the USTR has been a revolving door for special interests seeking to use international trade agreements like the TPP to push their own policy agenda, from the pharmaceutical industry to copyright maximalists to big banks,” said Evan Greer, a spokeswoman at Fight for the Future, a digital rights group opposed to the TPP pact. “The USTR should be made up of economic and technology experts, human rights advocates, and stakeholders who can help craft a trade policy that benefits the masses, not just multinational corporations.”

Clinton could try to alleviate those concerns by taking the unprecedented step of indicating who she would choose for USTR before the election, but Lee called that “highly unlikely. Because whoever she says, someone’s going to hate. Why would she do that?”

The irony is that most manufacturers, except in sectors like steel and autos, support the TPP agreement, which they believe will open new markets for U.S. exports, even though union groups fear it will lead to more jobs being moved overseas.

In addition, the administration argues it has been responsive to concerns raised by groups on the left by negotiating the toughest labor and environmental provisions in the TPP pact.

Rather than tackle new bilateral or regional trade deals, the AFL-CIO would like to see the USTR make more of an effort at the World Trade Organization to strengthen rules against currency manipulation and abusive labor practices and take on newer issues, such as giving the okay to “border adjustment taxes,” or duties on goods based on their carbon footprint, which the group says would help level the playing field between countries that take action to address climate change and those that do not.

Possible picks

If past practice holds, it could be more than a month after the election before either Clinton or Trump announce their pick for USTR, as the new president focuses first on filling the higher-profile positions of secretaries of state, defense, treasury and commerce.

Obama announced his choice for USTR, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, at the end of 2008, while eight years earlier, President George W. Bush didn’t reveal his pick, former State Department and White House official Robert Zoellick, until January 2001, more than two months after the election.

That’s because filling a Cabinet is often a balancing act between finding the most qualified individual and other factors, such as rewarding supporters, ensuring diversity and sometimes even finding a spot for a fellow politician suddenly out of a job.

“If the Democrats stay in the minority in the House, you might find some volunteers there, but I think it would have to be one who voted against TPA or has recently retired,” said Bill Reinsch, a trade policy expert at the Stimson Institute.

That could include Rep. Jim McDermott, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, who is stepping down after 28 years representing the Seattle area. The veteran lawmaker has supported some trade deals, including the pacts with South Korea and Panama, but voted against TPA and the Colombia free trade agreement.

Another congressman less known in the trade world but with ties to Clinton is Rep. Steve Israel, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens in New York. Both were elected to Congress in 2000 and shared the searing experience of dealing with the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Supporters describe him as hard-working and smart, with credibility with groups on the left. He voted against TPA and the Colombia, Panama and South Korea free trade agreement, but supported some trade deals in the past.

A slew of Democratic Senate candidates might need a job if their election bids fail, Reinsch said. They include Reps. Loretta Sanchez in California, Patrick Murphy in Florida and Ann Kirkpatrick in Arizona, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Katie McGinty, a former chief of staff for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

Some of the most successful U.S. trade representatives have been politicians, as opposed to policy experts, said Scott Miller, a former lobbyist for Procter and Gamble, now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Robert Strauss, a former Democratic National Committee chairman who ran the trade office for two years under President Jimmy Carter, “was an incredibly skillful operative who managed the politics of USTR extremely well,” said Miller, who also praised former Sen. Bill Brock’s four years as chief trade negotiator for President Ronald Reagan.

But it’s hard to say who Clinton might pick “because it’s unclear what her agenda will be,” Miller said. “She’s kind of a blank slate,” so whoever she picks will be an indication of how big a priority trade will be and what direction she’ll lean, he said.

There’s also a long list of Democrats that Clinton could turn for advice on trade issues even she ultimately chooses someone else for USTR. That includes Demetrios Marantis, a former deputy U.S. trade representative with experience on Capitol Hill who is now senior vice president for global government relations at Visa.

An older hand is Rufus Yerxa, who recently took over as president of the influential National Foreign Trade Council after a 10-year stint in Geneva as deputy director general of the World Trade Organization and earlier jobs as deputy U.S. trade representative and staff director of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade.

Federal Reserve Board Governor Lael Brainard is well-known around the world from her service as undersecretary of treasury for international affairs from 2010-13, while Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling has been immersed in international issues for decades, including during both the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations.

From labor’s perspective, a former member of Congress might fit the bill, but what’s most important is the next USTR not come from Wall Street, Lee said, taking a dig at current U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, who worked at Citigroup between jobs in the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations.

The presumption of most administrations seems to be that if “American corporations are profitable and are satisfied and have the mobility and the flexibility to move production wherever they need to and to have their intellectual property rights and their investments protected overseas, that will naturally be good for American economy,” Lee said. “And we think that’s proven false.”