The renewal of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was never going to be a cakewalk. But President-elect Trump’s announcement last week that he will issue executive orders imposing 25 percent tariffs on all imported goods from Mexico and Canada threatens the agreement that is the guiding framework for free trade and economic growth in North America.

Annual temperatures are at the warmest levels since record keeping began¹, bringing urgency to government, business, and individual efforts to stem the climate crisis. At the same time, the transition away from fossil fuels and towards more sustainable and renewable sources of energy is upending economies, requiring transformations of manufacturing industries and investments in new industries such as batteries and other “green” technologies. Against these trends, policymakers are juggling their climate mitigation efforts while still encouraging current and future economic growth.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to become one of the most impactful and consequential societal revolutions of the 21st century, with enormous benefits and risks that the world is just beginning to understand.

ALI’s new white paper, U.S. Leadership on AI Global Govenance, outlines the AI global governance landscape and associated gaps in policy in order to establish the importance of U.S. leadership in developing a global AI regulatory framework.

Much of the handwringing about AI over the past year has been about whether it will help humanity or invite some dystopian abyss. Less attention has been paid to what bad global actors can and will do with the technology (or already are doing), and how a Wild West approach to AI could endanger not just jobs but eventually national security.

Digital tools are especially important for women-owned businesses looking to expand to international markets. The recent pause in the U.S. government’s participation in negotiations on digital policies will disproportionally affect U.S. micro, small and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs), particularly women-owned companies.

ALI’s new report, Building An EV and Critical Mineral Supply Chain Agreement will explore how negotiating a supply chain agreement that has high labor and environmental standards can address all three policy goals.

The electric vehicle revolution that’s been sweeping the world has finally arrived in America, powered by technology, an urgency to address climate change and the nudge of government incentives that became a push with the Inflation Reduction Act. 

This is good news, it seems — until you look under the hood. 

The Biden Administration has launched a new model of bilateral economic engagement, moving away from traditional trade agreements. This is best reflected in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) but is also seen in its Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, the U.S.-Taiwan 21st Century Initiative, and other programs. Partnerships between U.S. government and business will be key to the success of these innovative, new arrangements.

Fifty-nine countries have expanded access to abortion since 1980. Last week, the U.S. became one of the 11 countries that have restricted access in the past three decades, joining a club that includes Russia, Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua. In their dissenting opinion, Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan wrote that the U.S. “will become an international outlier after today.”

On June 15th, ALI CEO Dr. Orit Frenkel testified before the Senate Finance Committee Subcommittee on Trade, as part of their hearing on Supply Chain Resiliency and Strengthening Long Term Security. A recording is available in this post and click here to read her submitted statement.

U.S. engagement in the Pacific is critical to this country’s workers, small businesses, values and economic and national security interests. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is an important initiative, recognizing the value of the U.S. as a standard-setter — for worker, environmental, digital and infrastructure standards — in order to continue as a 21st century global leader.

Kudos to President Biden as he heads to the West Coast to host the Summit of the Americas, the first time the U.S. has hosted the event since the original summit was hosted by President Clinton in 1994. This will be an important opportunity to hear from U.S. partners and discuss ideas for advancing the region. What happens after the summit, however, is even more important than the meeting. The administration must take the results and implement a comprehensive strategy to compete with China and advance the Western Hemisphere.

Over the past decade, China has sharpened its focus on countries considered to be in the U.S. zone of influence. China’s trade with Central and Latin America has skyrocketed from $18B in 2002 to $449B in 2021, making it the second largest overall trading partner in the region and the largest trading partner with Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, and Chile. Its investment in the region has also grown dramatically with its Belt and Road initiative now in 20 countries in the region and over $140 billion of investment.

ALI is pleased to release its new report: Creating Incentives to Join the IndoPacific Economic Framework. The report details the incentives which should be offered to encourage a broad group of countries to join the IndoPacific Economic Framework.

The first step in advancing IPEF will be offering sufficient incentives to attract a broader group of countries to join the framework, especially the Fair and Resilient Trade Pillar. While the ASEAN countries welcome U.S. regional reengagement, the Trade Pillar’s digital, labor, and environmental standards will require heavy domestic concessions from them.

National security concerns regarding China and supply chain shortages spurred by the pandemic have led to a bipartisan momentum to shore up American competitiveness and encourage U.S. manufacturing. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions on Russia have raised new interest in reducing U.S. supply chain dependency on these autocratic regimes.

In late February, the White House released a plan to revitalize American manufacturing and secure critical supply chains, which details how to rebuild domestic supply chains by invigorating the U.S. industrial base. This policy shift towards restoring American competitiveness and manufacturing is also seen in the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), a 2021 Senate bill aimed at countering China’s influence, and the House-passed America COMPETES Act of 2022.

Five years ago, the U.S. pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement that both parties ran against in 2016. By then, trade agreements had lost public trust and political appeal. Reasons for this turn against trade included the lack of a U.S. social safety net for workers and communities who were the losers from trade, frustration with China and other countries flaunting trade rules, and the escalation of outsourcing.

After years of multilateral trade negotiations, traditional trade barriers are, with some exceptions, quite low. Today, many global challenges arise from a disparity in the standards that countries use.

ALI is pleased to release its new report: A Worker-Centric Digital Agenda. The report builds on ALI’s previous reports, A Global Digital Strategy for America and Next Steps for U.S. Digital Leadership, to discuss digital policies that support workers and small business and how a digital trade agreement could be negotiated to incorporate these provisions.  

ALI is pleased to release its new report: Next Steps for U.S. Digital Leadership: Advancing Digital Governance with the Pacific and Europe. The report builds on ALI’s Global Digital Strategy for America released in February and recommends next steps to advance U.S. and global post-pandemic economic recovery, counter China’s technology challenge, and ensure that America plays a leading role in writing the digital rules for the 21st century.

Click here to read the report.

The United States is poised to launch a much-needed initiative to advance American global competitiveness. Done right, such an initiative could usher in a U.S. era of strong, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, along with reinvigorated global leadership. Both Congress and the Biden administration are contemplating major initiatives. They should take bold action, lest they squander this moment.

The new focus on competitiveness has been prompted by a confluence of factors: a global pandemic that highlighted supply chains and the importance of domestic manufacturing; a digital revolution that has emphasized the importance of digital inclusion, training and infrastructure; and the technological competitiveness of a risen China.

The development of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011 followed on a series of highly publicized cases, starting with the 1984 disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, where corporations acted with clear disregard for the rights of workers, indigenous communities, and political dissidents and human rights defenders.

The Guiding Principles established a new framework for defining the roles of states and businesses in protecting and respecting human rights. While broadly supported, the Guiding Principles also stirred a debate among business, government, and civil society about the appropriate role of so-called “voluntary” guidance vis-à-vis “binding” regulation. More recently, however, the overly rigid delineation of “voluntary” versus “binding” measures has broken down – often for good reason.