Medina Briefs Consumer Products Companies on Global Product Policy

Published on May 7, 2014

Helen Medina, USCIB’s senior director for product policy and innovation, addressed the Consumer Specialty Products Association’s International Committee’s mid-year meeting, May 6 in Chicago, providing CSPA members with an update on international product policy issues. CSPA, which represents hundreds of companies that manufacture, formulate, distribute and sell a wide range of consumer products, is a member of USCIB.

Medina presented an overview of USCIB’s product policy priorities, which include a science-based approach to chemicals life-cycles management and bringing downstream users’ perspectives to policy-making decisions. She also discussed three important international forums for USCIB Product Policy Working Group:

work in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process
the UN’s Strategic Approach to International Chemicals’ Management (SAICM) process, and
the work of the UN Environment Program.

In addition, USCIB has been working to provide input on Korea’s new chemical regulation, referred by many observers as “Korea REACH” due to the legislation’s similarities to the European Union’s REACH (registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals) rules.

Medina’s main takeaway points were that these inter-governmental discussions of product policy matter for companies of all sizes, that business can and must be involved in the process, and that different industries must work together to present a common private-sector viewpoint and positions.

Staff contact: Helen Medina

More on USCIB’s Product Policy Working Group

Business Groups Line Up to Support Global Investment In American Jobs Act

Published on May 6, 2014

A Nissan Rogue rolls off the assembly line at Nissan’s Smyrna, Tenn. plant in October 2013, the 10 millionth vehicle produced at the facility.

USCIB joined the Organization for International Investment and a number of other trade associations last week in sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promoting the Global Investment in American Jobs Act of 2013 (S. 1023/H.R. 2052).

H.R. 2052 passed the House of Representatives in September 2013, and was approved by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on April 9 of this year. Last week’s coalition letter urges Senators Reid and McConnell to take swift action on the bill. It follows a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2013, and one to the U.S. Senate in September 2013, constituting the third such effort in which USCIB has been involved.

“Foreign direct investment (FDI) is vital for American jobs and economic growth,” said Shaun Donnelly, USCIB’s vice president for investment and financial services. “In order to remain globally competitive and attractive to foreign investors, the United States should undertake the measures provided for in this bill.”

According to Donnelly, inward FDI brings not only needed capital but also technology, innovation and access to foreign markets. He said USCIB was pleased to see progress on the Global Investment in American Jobs Act of 2013, and would continue to push for its passage.

Staff contacts: Shaun Donnelly and Eva Hampl

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

NetMundial Conference in Brazil Debates Future of Internet Governance

Published on April 28, 2014

At last week’s NETMundial Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a diverse array of Internet stakeholders reached agreement on a non-binding document, the “Multistakeholder Statement of Sao Paulo.” This followed two days of intense work to develop a set of Internet governance principles, as well as a “roadmap” for the future evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem.

Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for information, communications and technology policy, attended the event along with scores of USCIB members and hundreds of business representatives from around the world. All told, over a thousand Internet stakeholders from business, government, civil society and the technical community – from nearly a hundred countries – took part in NetMundial, many from remote hubs set up to facilitate participation.

NETMundial Chair Vergilio Almeida, Brazil’s secretary of IT policy, hailed the two-day event as a “threshold of a new beginning,” not an end destination, and a “milestone in the history of Internet governance.” He said the multistakeholder statement might not be a “perfect document,” but nevertheless represented a significant achievement having been produced by a bottom-up process that encompassed input from literally all over the world.

Wanner said the multistakeholder statement reflected important discussions on key aspects of Internet policy of interest to USCIB members and global business. On net neutrality, for example, despite strong support from civil society and some governments to include a specific reference to net neutrality as an Internet governance principle, business and its allies advocated effectively for inclusion of net neutrality as a “point to be further discussed beyond NETMundial” requiring better understanding and further discussion.

On intellectual property, Wanner said business successfully advocated for the inclusion of language on IP as part of the statement’s Human Rights principle, which states that everyone should have the right to access, share, create and distribute information on the Internet, consistent with the rights of authors and creators as established in law. In addition, business and its allies worked to secure key language upholding IP rights in the principle calling for an “enabling environment for innovation and creativity.”

Other parts of the multistakeholder statement addressed protection of Internet intermediaries, privacy and surveillance, and the future of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Wanner said USCIB is monitoring follow-up to NetMundial closely and will coordinate the elaboration of additional business views with members, the International Chamber of Commerce and our other global business partners.

Staff contacts: Barbara Wanner

More on USCIB’s Information, Communication and Technology Committee

OECD Global Forum on Responsible Business Conduct

Published on March 3, 2014

OECD Forum on Integrity

BIAC will participate in the OECD Forum on Integrity on March 19, held as part of the OECD’s second annual Integrity Week (March 17-21), which includes a series of events relating to anti-corruption and integrity (click here). The forum will provide a platform for government officials as well as experts from international organizations, business and civil society to discuss best practices plus recent developments and projects relating to anti-corruption and integrity building. Klaus Moosmayer, chair of the BIAC Task Force on Anti-Corruption/Bribery will be part of the panel on new anti-corruption and integrity projects. On the same day, the BIAC Task Force will organize a luncheon discussion with the participation of the Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery to discuss BIAC’s strategic contribution to the OECD in this area.

For further information, please contact Shaun Donnelly (sdonnelly@uscib.org).

Last year, the OECD launched the annual Global Forum on Responsible Business Conduct to strengthen international dialogue on responsible business conduct and contribute to the effective implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs).

This year’s Global Forum, which will take place in Paris on June 26-27, will take stock of the efforts in global responsible business conduct since the 2013 meeting, with a particular focus on developments in emerging economies and challenging investment environments.

Business participation in the forum is being organized through BIAC, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD.

The forum will feature sessions on responsible investment in the textiles sector, stakeholder engagement in the extractive sector as well as responsible business conduct along agricultural supply chains and in the financial sector. The Forum will also include a session on the grievance mechanism of the OECD MNE Guidelines, as well as regional side-events.

The Global Forum will take place back-to-back with the meeting of National Contact Points of the MNE Guidelines, which will include a consultation with stakeholders, as well as other high-level events.

For further information on the Global Forum click here. Active business participation is encouraged. If you would like to participate, please contact Hanni Rosenbaum at BIAC (rosenbaum@biac.org).

Staff contact: Rachel Spence

More on USCIB’s Corporate Responsibility Committee

USCIB Takes Part in APEC Chemicals Meetings

Published on February 25, 2014

Sarah Green, senior science advisor with the State Department, and USCIB’s Helen Medina (right) at the APEC Chemicals Dialogue steering group meeting in Ningbo, China.

Earlier this month, Helen Medina, USCIB’s senior director for product policy and innovation, took part in the APEC Chemical Dialogue Steering Group and related meetings in Ningbo, China. The sessions were held in concert with the first APEC senior officials meeting of China’s host year.

The goal of the steering group meetings was to prepare for the upcoming APEC Chemical Dialogue meeting in August, which will take place in the northern Chinese city of Harbin.

The Chemical Dialogue is an important forum in which APEC officials and industry representatives come together for public-private dialogue on chemical issues in the Asia-Pacific region. It affords industry representatives an opportunity to work with regulators and trade officials from the APEC economies on a variety of project-based issues.

Prior to the steering group sessions, there was an industry meeting in which industry participants gathered to discuss their priorities going forward and to formulate industry-wide positions, which were then discussed with their government counterparts. During the discussion about the types of outcomes industry is seeking, Medina made an intervention about the importance of having the downstream user’s perspective in the work.

Medina also suggested that, in order to promote the common goal of regulatory coherence throughout the economies participating, it would be useful to identify the projects that each of these initiatives is undertaking that relates to the regulation of chemicals, and to describe the work that is being done.

The major themes of the steering group meeting dealt with regulatory cooperation and concrete projects. One item of particular importance to USCIB members is how confidential business information is being treated in APEC economies. USCIB has taken a lead by developing a survey to address this question.

Medina presented the objectives and importance of the survey. She reminded participants that no other international governmental organization, such as APEC, is discussing this topic and that the chemical dialogue has the opportunity to produce a work project to better understand how APEC economies are sharing information.

Once information has been gathered from the survey, the goal would be to foster a discussion on how the Chemical Dialogue can work to converge on how economies protect confidential business information, and what type of information is considered confidential. The analysis of the results will be reported in Harbin later this year.

Other items discussed included a proposal for a workshop on regulatory cooperation at the Harbin meeting, which won wide support. The goal is to highlight issues to consider when implementing best practices for chemical management. USCIB will volunteer to be on the steering committee which will develop the workshop.

Another item, which comes under the theme of sustainability, was related to a Cooperative Activity in the Asia-Pacific on Marine Debris. The idea is to a establish a work stream to promote regional awareness and adoption of strategies to effectively manage and extract value from municipal solid waste, and to energize collaborative approaches to reducing plastic marine debris, including efforts to reduce plastic packaging through innovative product. This work could also contribute to broader APEC work on ocean issues.

Finally, Medina updated APEC members on the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) UN Environment Program-led project on Chemicals in Products. She highlighted industry’s concerns with the project and urged Chemical Dialogue members to get in touch with SAICM representatives that are involved. Given the importance of the project, participants agreed that it is imperative to keep this item on the agenda for the Chemical Dialogue in Harbin.

At the end of the meeting, Ryan Macfarlane, the State Department’s principal APEC coordinator, was formally introduced as chair of the Chemical Dialogue, succeeding Barbara Norton of USTR, who has retired.

Staff contact: Helen Medina

More on USCIB’s Product Policy Working Group

Taking Our TTIP Agenda to Europe

Published on February 24, 2014

USCIB’s Shaun Donnelly met with the media at the U.S. embassy in Paris…

Earlier this month, Shaun Donnelly, USCIB’s vice president for investment and financial services, visited France and the Netherlands on a U.S. government speaking tour, explaining the views and priorities of the American business community on the ongoing U.S.-EU negotiations of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

A former U.S. ambassador and USTR trade negotiator, Donnelly has a long and deep background in transatlantic trade matters. “On this trip, I was able to convey USCIB and BCTT positions on the importance of achieving a TTIP agreement that is ambitious, comprehensive and high-standard,” he said. “We oppose sectoral or chapter carve-outs.”

Donnelly delivered several speeches, and took part in various seminars and interviews with local business groups, American chambers of commerce, media representatives, universities and think tanks. As the co-chair of two working groups (Investment and Competition Policy) in the broad Washington-based Business Coalition for Transatlantic Trade (BCTT), he is one of several USCIB staff members playing leadership roles in the BCTT effort. USCIB Senior Vice President Rob Mulligan represents USCIB on the BCTT Steering Committee.

…and spoke with students at France’s Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales.

Donnelly particularly emphasized the importance of strong investment provisions (including investor-state dispute settlement) as well as protecting intellectual property rights, ensuring cross-border data flows, and reducing regulatory and product-standard barriers in both directions.

As he did during a similar TTIP-focused visit to Denmark last October, Donnelly sought to strengthen coordination on TTIP with key European business groups. And lucky for him, he avoided all the terrible weather afflicting so much of the United States!

Staff contact: Shaun Donnelly

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

More on USCIB’s European Union Committee

ICC Mediation Competition Attracts Teams From Around the World

Published on February 18, 2014

Laura Wolfe (left) and Mary Grace White of the New York University School of Law teamed up to win a place in the quartersfinals of the annual ICC mediation competition.

The biggest-ever ICC Mediation Competition, which took place over six days in Paris earlier this month, brought together 66 university teams and 120 professional mediators from around the world.

In a final closely observed by some 350 spectators, law students demonstrated their mediation advocacy skills in solving a hypothetical but lifelike dispute over the patenting of a newly invented pharmaceutical drug.

Applying ICC’s new Mediation Rules, a team from Monash University in Australia played the part of the requesting party, and a team from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich the respondent, with team members acting as either counsel or client.

The team from Munich emerged victorious, earning internships with the ICC International Centre for ADR and the litigation and arbitration department of the law firm Linklaters.

“The competition is a great opportunity to see how students from other countries and jurisdictions address commercial disputes that businesses face,” said Conor McLaughlin, a member of the winning team along with Harley Steward and Martina Rehman. “Mediation is probably new to a lot of law students. Most focus primarily on litigation. So this competition gives us an opportunity to explore other ways of resolving disputes, and try and find solutions that don’t involve the lengthy, costly, and sometimes destructive, route to litigation.”

Munich was coached by Raffael Probst, of the Munich Center for Dispute Resolution, with help from doctoral candidate David Kaufmann. “My research is mainly on psychology and neuroscience of moral judgment and cooperative behavior, which kind of helps when it comes to understanding how you get the other side to stay at the table and join you in exploring joint interests and options,” said Kaufmann. “It was very interesting to see, for the first time, how things I know in theory actually translate to the practice of mediation and negotiation.”

“Through our annual Mediation Competition, ICC aims to raise awareness of mediation which provides businesses with a procedural framework to settle matters cordially, rapidly and cost-effectively,” said ICC Secretary General Jean-Guy Carrier. “ICC is proud to contribute to the education of the next generation of dispute resolution specialists and to provide a platform for mediators from all around the world. We hope all participants return home with increased knowledge and skills, helping promote high mediation standards around the world.”

“Elated” was how Mary Grace White, one of two students representing New York University School of Law, described herself upon earning a spot in the quarterfinals: “We worked hard on this, and we’re very, very happy to be here. I hope it’s going to create new interest in mediation back home, especially with New York University’s focus on international law.”

Teammate Laura Wolfe added: “All the teams we pled against were amazing: we learned so much from them, and from the judges’ feedback. Everyone has been willing to answer questions and give us constructive tips, and that’s something in our experience that’s unique to this competition. It’s useful, in all facets of law, to learn the mediation skills set, the ability to actively listen to someone and try to see where they’re coming from. It’s whetted our appetite for exploring other mediation opportunities.”

Many universities competing in the ICC Mediation Competition for the first time got through to this year’s final rounds, including teams from Aarhus, Maastricht, and Trinidad and Tobago. With 66 teams competing from universities in 32 countries, helped by 120 professionals volunteering as mediators and judges, this year’s event has attracted more than 500 participants.

USCIB Delivers Business Recommendations on UN Sustainable Development Goals

Published on February 4, 2014

In a January 31 paper, USCIB identified four broad prerequisites and catalysts for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper sets out USCIB’s view that the SDGs and broader UN Post-2015 Development Agenda are vital to improving the UN’s contributions to development and sustainability. The USCIB SDG Recommendations also call for substantive engagement opportunities for representative business organizations to participate in and inform the UN SDG deliberations.

The USCIB SDG Recommendations focus on:

Good Governance
Economic Growth and Economic Empowerment
Innovation
Infrastructure

The paper highlights 10 issues that merit particular attention in the SDGs, with many elements in common with those set out in the UN High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. USCIB developed these Recommendations via its SDG Working Group chaired by Brian Lowry (Monsanto) and Tam Nguyen (Bechtel).

“The U.S. business community has a strong stake in meaningful and practical SDGs,” said Norine Kennedy, USCIB’s Vice President for Strategic International Engagement. “National implementation and the right conditions in-country are the foundations on which a UN new paradigm for international development should be based. The SDGs will be successfully put into practice in those countries that have institutions and practices in place, and involve their private sector in meaningful ways.”

USCIB, working with the Global Business Alliance for Post-2015 Development, will continue to weigh in at UN meetings to frame the SDGs, and in the High-Level Political Forum that will be held in New York this July. The SDGs are slated to be completed and delivered to the UN General Assembly for approval in 2015.

Staff contact: Norine Kennedy

BIAC Chairman Talks Trade at Washington DC Forum

Published on February 4, 2014

On January 31, Phil O’Reilly, the chairman of BIAC, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD, discussed trade policy and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in remarks to the Global Business Dialogue forum in Washington, D.C.

O’Reilly, CEO of Business New Zealand, laid out broad conceptual points to guide the TPP parties. “It’s important that we don’t let today’s politics get in the way of what will be a deal that will transform the Pacific trading environment over the next 20 to 30 years,” he said.

Citing influential research from the OECD on global supply networks and trade in value-added, the BIAC chairman stated: “The world is increasingly dominated by global value chains, so that the new glue of trade is not containers going across a wharf, they are an outcome. The new glue of trade to my mind is investment.”

To read the full text of O’Reilly’s remarks, click here.

Staff contact: Rob Mulligan

More on USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee

In Davos ICC Addresses Global Challenges

Published on January 24, 2014

L-R: ICC Chairman Terry McGraw, WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo and ICC Vice Chair Sunil Mittal

A contingent of business leaders under the banner of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) participated in the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week to press for continued progress on trade, investment and business priorities for the G20.

Led by ICC Chairman Terry McGraw (who also serves as chairman of USCIB), Vice Chairman Sunil Mittal and Secretary General Jean-Guy Carrier, the group included several CEO members of the ICC G20 Advisory Group as well as members of ICC commissions, the ICC working bodies that develop ICC policy positions and voluntary rules on major issues for international business.

Davos highlights include Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott‘s keynote address outlining Australia’s G20 priorities to boost global trade, strengthen tax regimes and coordination, address infrastructure investment bottlenecks and further improve financial regulation. Abbott announced hopes that G20 leaders could make a practical difference towards building a stronger and more prosperous global economy in 2014.