Alice Slayton Clark Archives

BIAC Calls on OECD to Build a Compelling Case for Private Sector-led Growth

Published on January 19, 2015

At BIAC’s (Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD) annual consultation with OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Ambassadors, BIAC’s chair Phil O’Reilly presented the private sector’s growth agenda for 2015, focusing on investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

“Considering the uneven recovery of OECD economies and serious imbalances in world markets, private sector-led growth has to be a top priority”, said O’Reilly.

Presenting the three pillars of the private sector’s growth agenda for 2015: Investment, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, O’Reilly added that: “Theagenda for growth can only succeed if there is trust. Trust in business, trust in governments, and trust in the OECD. More needs to be done by all of these parties to show that, with the right conditions in place, business can be a dynamic force for the success of our economies and the wellbeing of citizens.”

Economies rely on private sector business activities and competitive markets. With the right conditions in place, business can be a dynamic force for the success of our economies and the wellbeing of citizens, investing in people, jobs, technologies and infrastructures, serving billions of consumers daily, and paying taxes that supply government spending and support public services.

BIAC is therefore calling upon the OECD to:

  • Address protectionism in global markets and build an enabling environment for investment, at local levels and across borders;
  • Deliver advice for integrated policies across sectors that foster innovation and support sustainable growth and employment in the digital economy;
  • Establish a better understanding of the potential of SMEs and entrepreneurship, with due focus on less and smart regulation, skills, access to finance, and women’s entrepreneurship.

USCIB Letter to President Obama on U.S. Trade Agenda

Published on January 13, 2015

Ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address, USCIB sent a letter to the president urging him to highlight the U.S trade agenda and call for passage of Trade Promotion Authority. The letter emphasizes that a strong push from the Administration, Congress and the business community is needed to get TPA over the finish line.

“This year will present opportunities for the U.S. to conclude trade and investment agreements that will ensure that the United States grows its economy, creates jobs and opens markets to U.S. goods and services reaching customers around the world,” wrote USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson in the letter to President Obama. “TPA would provide a critical boost to achieving these shared goals among U.S. workers, companies and citizens.”

In addition, the Trade Benefits America Coalition, of which USCIB is a member, also sent a letter to House and Senate leadership urging Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to modernize TPA early this year.

The Trade Benefits America Coalition includes a wide range of associations and companies that are dedicated to the pursuit of U.S. international trade agreements that benefit American businesses, farmers, workers, and consumers. The Coalition believes that passage of modernized TPA legislation is important to help ensure America continues to benefit from trade.

China Commits to Stronger IPR Protection at US-China Trade Meeting

Published on December 22, 2014

The 25th US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) concluded last week in Chicago after two days of talks and negotiations. The JCCT is the primary forum for addressing bilateral trade and investment issues and promoting commercial opportunities between the United States and China. At the forum, United States Trade Representative Michael Froman and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and the Chinese delegation met with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang to discuss economic relations between the United States and China.

Officials from both countries made progress on agriculture market access. China committed to import American soybeans and dairy products, and announced that it would pursue dialogue with the United States on biotechnology in agriculture.

China made commitments on Intellectual Property Rights protection, agreeing to protect American companies’ trade secrets and to work on new trade secrets law to enhance protection. China also agreed to streamline China’s regulatory processes and cut red tape for American imports of new, innovative pharmaceuticals and medical devices, which should lead to increases in U.S. exports and jobs in these sectors. And on China’s anti-monopoly law, China committed to treat both domestic and foreign companies equally, and to provide increased transparency for companies under investigation.

With regard to the U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty, USCIB joined several other business organizations in signing a letter to Vice Premier Wang Yang in anticipation of his participation in the JCCT to signal to the Chinese government the U.S. business community’s strong support for a high-standard BIT.

Staff contacts: Justine Badimon and Eva Hampl

More on USCIB’s China Committee

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

Turkey Gets Ball Rolling on 2015 B20 Summit

Published on December 16, 2014
L-R: Guler Sabanci, Rifat Hisarciklioglu (Chair of B20 Turkey), Ali Babacan (Turkisk Deputy Prime Minister) and Terry McGraw (ICC).
L-R: Guler Sabanci, Rifat Hisarciklioglu (Chair of B20 Turkey), Ali Babacan (Turkisk Deputy Prime Minister) and Terry McGraw (ICC).

USCIB’s global network, including the International Chamber of Commerce, (ICC) the International Organization of Employers (IOE) and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD, joined over 500 Turkish and international business leaders, key international business groups and government officials in Istanbul on Monday to officially launch preparations for the 2015 G20 Business (B20) Summit scheduled to take place in Antalya, Turkey on November 14 and 15, 2015.

The B20 group provides global business leaders with a forum for producing policy recommendations to be delivered at the annual G20 meeting, reflecting the key role the private sector plays as a driver of strong, sustainable economic growth.

“2015 will be a year where G20 will focus its efforts on ensuring inclusive and robust growth through collective action,” said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan. “This can be formulated as the three I’s of the Turkish Presidency: Inclusiveness, Implementation, and Investment for Growth.”

Regarding inclusivity, Babacan emphasized the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to economic growth and job creation, and noted that his G20 colleagues believed that the voice of SMEs must be integrated into the work of the G20. Babacan also underscored the essential role the B20 would play in integrating SMEs and announced a partnership with ICC to launch the Global SME Forum.

Warmly accepting Babacan’s joint initiative, ICC Chairman Terry McGraw said: “ICC welcomes the opportunity to partner with Turkey to ensure that the SME initiative is a success this year and becomes an anchor of the B20’s work for years to come.”

Also at the inaugural G20 meeting, IOE President Daniel Funes de Rioja spoke about employment, job creation and human capital development in the context of the G20 agenda. He noted that the G20 had not yet lived up to its commitments to lower global unemployment rates, and he called on G20 leaders to put the spotlight on job creation, SMEs, labor migration and greater inclusion of women in the workplace as key areas for action.

BIAC Secretary General Bernhard Welschke delivered remarks on a high-level panel concerning steps to further improve B20 interactions with the G20. The B20 summit in 2015 will be held in November back-to-back with the G20 summit, providing an opportunity for maximum business impact into the policymaking process at G20 level.

Demonstrating an understanding of the valuable role the business community plays in the G20 process, Babacan said: “The ideas you [B20] develop are valuable to us. Economic growth can only be achieved by private sector investment. No matter what decisions we take, if you don’t have the confidence to undertake investment we are not going to meet our growth objective. This is why the B20 is so important.”

Staff contact: Rob Mulligan

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

USCIB Takes Trade Agenda to Europe

Published on December 11, 2014
Shaun Donnelly talks TTIP at the INSIGNIS business school in Bordeaux, France.
Shaun Donnelly talks TTIP at the INSIGNIS business school in Bordeaux, France.

USCIB Vice President for Investment and Financial Services Shaun Donnelly, a retired U.S. Ambassador and USTR trade negotiator, was invited by the U.S. Embassy in France and IFRI, the leading French think tank on international relations issues, to present a U.S. business perspective on the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under negotiations for the past 18 months.

At IFRI’s annual Transatlantic conference in Paris last Friday and in sessions in Bordeaux earlier in the week with university students, city leaders and wine exporters, Donnelly laid out USCIB’s strong support for a “comprehensive, ambitions, and high standard” TTIP with the potential to help drive economic growth, jobs and competitiveness in Europe and the United States.

As in many TTIP events at home in the United States, Donnelly spent much of him time debunking myths fomented by activist opponents of TTIP on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Investment protections including Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions, food safety and environmental regulations and intellectual property protections remain some of the most controversial, and most misunderstood, issues among the public in Europe,” Donnelly said. “But we at USCIB want to do our part to help get the perspectives, priorities, and concerns of U.S. business exposed to European audiences.”

Proving we’re willing to go beyond the bright lights of France, Donnelly has accepted a follow-on invitation from the State Department to brave the winter weather and take the U.S. views on TTIP to Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Austria in early January.

Staff contact: Shaun Donnelly

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

USCIB Member Wins State Departments Corporate Excellence Award

Published on December 9, 2014
L-R: Charles Rivkin (U.S. State Dept.), Cathy Novelli (U.S. State Dept.) and Ahmet Bozer (Coca-Cola). Photo Credit: U.S. State Department.
L-R: Charles Rivkin (U.S. State Dept.), Cathy Novelli (U.S. State Dept.) and Ahmet Bozer (Coca-Cola).
Photo Credit: U.S. State Department.

For the fourth time in five years, a USCIB member has won the U.S. State Department’s Award for Corporate Excellence, an honor bestowed on U.S. companies that undertake responsible business activities to improve lives and advance the needs of local communities around the world.

The Coca-Cola Company received the 2014 Corporate Excellence Award for providing disaster relief services to areas in the Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. Coca-Cola improved water quality through its efforts to support watersheds, increase access to safe water, and educate communities on water conservation.

The company also partnered with the Philippines Department of Education to increase access to primary education for more than 60,000 disadvantaged children.

This year’s other awardees included Wagner Asia Equipment for its commitment to public-private partnerships in Mongolia to protect the environment, and EcoPlanet Bamboo Group for its sustainable development work regenerating degraded pasturelands in Nicaragua. Wagner is one of the largest Caterpillar dealers in the western United States, and Caterpillar is a longtime USCIB member.

Ariel Meyerstein, USCIB vice president for labor affairs, corporate responsibility and corporate governance, reflected that the awardees’ efforts were “perfect examples of the way the private sector can minimize its impacts on the environment and society and also proactively partner with the public sector to respect and promote basic human rights where they operate, which is key to securing and preserving their social license to operate.”

Shaun Donnelly, USCIB’s vice president for investment and financial services, and Eva Hampl, director for investment trade and financial services, attended the Corporate Excellence Award ceremony at the State Department, officiated Cathy Novelli, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, and Ambassador Charles Rivkin, assistant secretary in the bureau of economic and business affairs at the State Department. Novelli presented the Corporate Excellence Award to Ahmet Bozer, Coca-Cola’s executive vice president and president of Coca-Cola International.

Coca-Cola also won the Corporate Excellence Award in 2002 for its work in Egypt. Recent USCIB member winners have included Intel in 2012, Proctor and Gamble in 2011, and Cisco in 2010. Two other USCIB members, General Electric and Chevron were among the other finalists for this year’s award.

Read Ambassador Rivkin’s remarks at the 16th Annual Awards for Corporate Excellence.

For more information on State’s Corporate Excellence Award, please visit: http://www.state.gov/e/eb/ace

Staff contacts: Shaun Donnelly and Eva Hampl

Washington Update: October – November 2014

Published on December 2, 2014

The USCIB Washington Office has been especially busy in the last two months hosting an inaugural OECD/USCIB/BIAC Trade and Investment Conference and the USCIB Annual International Leadership Award Dinner, which occurred for the first time in Washington, DC. Ambassador Michael Froman (USTR) spoke at both of those events, and the dinner also featured remarks by the honoree WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske and Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6), among others. These events took place between travel to Korea, France, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and China; meetings with representatives of the B20/G20 from the U.S., Australia and Turkey, as well as with Ambassador Daniel Sepulveda of the State Department, Bob Stack of Treasury, Ed Brzytwa, Director of APEC Affairs at the United States Trade Representative, and Anne Carblanc of the OECD; and presentations at the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Investment Forum, the UN Committee of Tax Experts, and the APEC Leaders’ Summit.

Download the full update.

New OECD Report Will Help Fight Transnational Bribery

Published on December 2, 2014

scalesToday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development launched its Foreign Bribery Report in Paris. The report presents an analysis of foreign bribery cases that have been concluded since 1999, and it is intended to help combat transnational corruption.

The launch event included an opening address by OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría, an address by French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, and a panel discussion with experts, including, GE Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel Brackett B. Denniston, U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell, chair of Transparency International José Carlos Ugaz, and Siemens Chief Compliance Officer Klaus Moosmayer, who is also the chair of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) Task Force on Anti-Corruption/Bribery.

Shaun Donnelly, vice president of investment and financial services at USCIB, as well as Kimberley Claman, senior vice president of international government affairs at Citi, represented USCIB at this event. They were joined by Hanni Rosenbaum, senior policy director at BIAC, who leads their anti-bribery effort.

The report provides an analysis of 427 foreign bribery cases that have been concluded since the entry into force of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention in 1999. Key findings include that 53 percent of cases involved corporate management or CEOs, one in three cases were instigated by self-reporting (versus only two percent of cases by whistleblowers), 57 percent of cases involved bribes to obtain public procurement contracts, a staggering 75 percent of cases involved payments through intermediaries, and 69 percent of cases were settled with sanctions.

The various speakers all noted the groundbreaking importance of the report, however also emphasized that understanding the problem is only part of the solution. Addressing this point, the report concludes with Next Steps, including a list of ideas for future work, such as annual updates, a public database, further study of SOEs, or additional study of the demand side of bribery, a point Secretary General Gurria also noted in his comments.

This OECD report presents an important step forward in the OECD’s anti-bribery work surrounding the Convention.

Staff contacts: Shaun Donnelly and Eva Hampl

Global Business Urges Take the Emotion Out of the ISDS Debate

Published on November 27, 2014

The Financial Times has published a letter from Winand Quaedvlieg, chair of the Committee on International Investment at the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD, expressing concern about the emotionally charged debate over investor-state dispute settlement in international trade agreements.

This issue has attracted attention from activists and politicians in Europe and elsewhere in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks and other negotiations. USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson touched on the backlash against ISDS in a recent column.

The BIAC letter is reproduced below, and can also be read on the Financial Times website.

Sir, The international business community is extremely concerned about the negative tone, and the lack of balance, in the debate on investment protection and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Investment protection is indispensable in any investment regime or agreement. And ISDS is a necessary element of investment protection, not only in agreements with developing countries but in every agreement. It is an integral part of the system.

ISDS was created 50 years ago as an instrument to enforce the rule of law: to protect foreign investors against frequent arbitrary behavior of host states and to guarantee them a fair process. Host states have much more power than foreign companies and there is always a risk of biased national courts. But now some in the public debate are turning the issue upside down. Investment protection is framed as a demonic instrument for evil companies to bar innocent states from promoting the public good. This is a caricature. The populist argument against ISDS is totally out of proportion.

According to UNCTAD, the world stock of foreign direct investment is close to $26tn. ISDS has existed for 50 years, during which there have been 568 documented cases. Of these, 274 have been decided upon: 43 per cent were decided in favor of the government, 26 per cent were settled and 31 per cent, about 85 cases, were decided in favor of the company. Only a very few of these led to public debate.

A trade diplomat of a large emerging economy recently said: “If you compare the advantages of the total stock of FDI in my country with the number of ISDS cases we lost, it was a very good bargain.” Seen in this light, ISDS does not justify the current highly emotional debate. This does not mean that the existing system should not be discussed. In the current debate, a number of issues have been raised: transparency of procedures, the compatibility of investment protection and governments’ ability to regulate, introducing an appeal mechanism, a new code of conduct for arbitrators, early discharge of frivolous claims, improvement of timing and enforcement, or alternative dispute resolution. It is the role of governments and organizations such as the OECD and UNCTAD to help de-escalate the discussion and make it rational and fact-based. Business is prepared to participate actively in the debate.

Winand Quaedvlieg

Chair of the Committee on International Investment, Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD (BIAC)

Staff contacts: Shaun Donnelly and Eva Hampl

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

B20 Welcomes G20 Commitments on Growth Job Creation

Published on November 17, 2014
USCIB and ICC Chairman Terry McGraw addresses the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia.
USCIB and ICC Chairman Terry McGraw addresses the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia.

The B20 business coalition has welcomed G20 commitments to implement an ambitious structural reform agenda which will lift global GDP by more than two per cent above expectations over the next five years and create millions of new jobs.

Richard Goyder, B20 chair, said the international business community welcomed commitments made by G20 leaders in the communiqué and Brisbane Action Plan on infrastructure, human capital, financial regulation, trade and anti-corruption.

During the G20 leaders summit in Brisbane, Australia this past weekend, Terry McGraw, chair of USCIB and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), joined a small group of business leaders in meetings with the G20 leaders and other senior ministers to discuss the B20 recommendations.

The G20 leaders released a final communiqué which includes several items that the B20 has actively supported. The B20 issued a media release commenting on the communiqué that highlights several key elements form the leaders statement:

  • B20 fully supports the G20 Global Infrastructure Initiative, a multi-year work program to lift quality public and private infrastructure investment, particularly the establishment of the Global Infrastructure Hub.
  • On trade, B20 welcomed the G20’s commitment to build a stronger trading system based on a robust and effective World Trade Organization.  Accelerating commitments on trade facilitation was a core recommendation of the B20 this year, so the recent breakthrough on implementation was welcome.
  • Improvements to global supply chains and the reforms outlined in individual country growth strategies to facilitate trade by lowering costs, streamlining customs procedures, reducing regulatory burdens and strengthening trade-enabling services will benefit society broadly.
  • B20 was encouraged by the G20’s commitment to improve transparency in the public and private sectors as corruption is a major obstacle to sustainable economic, political and social development.

The three legs of USCIB’s global network – ICC, the International Organization of Employers and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD – all contribute to the B20 process, which provides global business leaders with a forum for producing policy recommendations to be delivered at the annual G20 meeting, reflecting the key role the private sector plays as a driver of strong, sustainable growth.

Read More: ICC Calls on G20 to Maintain Momentum on Growth and Jobs Agenda