New Platform Showcases Business Support for UN’s 2030 Development Agenda

Published on September 15, 2015

New York, N.Y., September 15, 2015 – As world leaders get set to descend on New York for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit, companies from the United States and around the world are lining up in support of this ambitious and far-reaching effort to transform our world.

Reflecting this commitment, the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) has launched Business for 2030, a new web portal aimed at stimulating more productive partnerships between the public and private sectors in support of the SDGs. USCIB serves as the voice of American business in the UN and other multilateral bodies, primarily through its role as the American affiliate of several global business groups, including the International Chamber of Commerce.

“We wanted to highlight concrete initiatives and partnerships that our members and partners are undertaking to support the 2030 Agenda,” said USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson. “We believe that Business for 2030 can inspire renewed trust in the private sector, while catalyzing active, sustained business engagement in support of the SDGs.”

The Business for 2030 portal, which will be launched at a September 24 event in Midtown Manhattan, features more than 80 real-world examples of company initiatives and public-private partnerships, organized in relation to over 50 of the business-relevant SDG targets.

The initiative picks up on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon‘s exhortation for the private sector “to take its place at the table and plot a path forward for the next 15 years, reaffirming once again that responsible business is a force for good.”

At the September 24 launch, USCIB member companies and international business representatives will engage with the broader development community to provide deeper context to a selection of the diverse examples featured on the Business for 2030 web portal. There will be special focus on the critical role of infrastructure in catalyzing progress on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and the need to transform partnerships globally and locally, through enhanced national development strategic planning and coordination for achieving the SDGs.

Participants at the event will include UN member state and secretariat representatives, along with corporate executives and representatives of civil society.

About USCIB:
USCIB promotes open markets, competitiveness and innovation, sustainable development and corporate responsibility, supported by international engagement and regulatory coherence. Its members include U.S.-based global companies and professional services firms from every sector of our economy, with operations in every region of the world. With a unique global network encompassing leading international business organizations, USCIB provides business views to policy makers and regulatory authorities worldwide, and works to facilitate international trade and investment. More at www.uscib.org.

Contact:
Jonathan Huneke, USCIB
+1 917.420.0039, jhuneke@uscib.org

More on USCIB’s Corporate Responsibility Committee

USCIB “Very Concerned” with Proposed Changes to US Model Income Tax Treaty

Published on September 15, 2015

USCIB sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury on September 14 expressing concern with proposed U.S. model tax treaty changes, which in part attempt to prevent double non-taxation of income between tax treaty partners.

While acknowledging that the treaty provisions address legitimate concerns, USCIB said that the draft provisions “tilt too far in their attempt to prevent inappropriate claims of treaty benefits.”

USCIB argued that because tax treaties are designed to promote cross-border trade and investment, if treaty benefits aren’t granted to legitimate claimants, then the treaty will fail in its fundamental purpose.

The letter also said that the draft provisions aren’t clear, raising questions about how the changes will be interpreted, and noted that clarity is important to taxpayers, tax authorities and treaty negotiators and legislatures.

USCIB also raised concerns about how the proposed changes will be implemented, and said that “these rules may be unacceptable to a substantial number of existing U.S. treaty partners.”

Read USCIB’s letter.

The letter concludes that the proposed changes to U.S. model income tax treaties are not a good way to address concerns about double non-taxation, and the changes may also have the unintended consequence of making tax treaties more difficult to negotiate.

TPP: A 21st Century Trade Agreement

Published on September 14, 2015

by USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson

Like many in the U.S. business community and other key stakeholders, we at USCIB and our member companies are eagerly anticipating a successful and swift conclusion to the long-running Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. We are encouraged by senior White House National Economic Council official Carolyn Atkinson’s suggestion last week that a successful conclusion may be imminent.

Experience dictates that the endgame of any international negotiation is always more complicated, more challenging and less predictable than foreseen. However, getting a comprehensive, ambitious, high-standard TPP agreement over the finish line is absolutely a top priority for our organization and our member companies. A strong TPP is good news for American workers, companies, communities and taxpayers.

From what I have heard about the prospective TPP agreement, I am forcefully reminded how different this agreement will be from other trade agreements that have gone before. We love NAFTA, CAFTA and the network of bilateral and plurilateral FTAs the U.S. has built over the past 30 years. They have paid tremendous dividends for our country. But it is not just for semantic reasons that the TPP is branded as a “Partnership.” rather than a “Free Trade Agreement”; the TPP goes well beyond a traditional FTA.

Continue reading the full post on Investment Policy Central.

Business Leadership on the United Nations SDGs

Published on September 14, 2015

The United Nations has embarked on an ambitious effort to define forward-looking objectives – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – to address global economic, social and health challenges. This exercise represents a unique opportunity to mobilize the international community around the importance of private sector-led growth and a more robust, inclusive global economy that makes significant strides towards eradicating poverty and improving the lives of people everywhere. The UN will formally adopt the SDGs and other elements of its 2030 Development Agenda at the SDG summit in New York from September 25 to 27.

USCIB believes that sustainability is best advanced by creating policy frameworks that catalyze the global marketplace and the business community’s role in developing solutions to environmental and other societal challenges. The private sector will be an essential partner to bridging the gap in finance and technical capacity necessary to meet the challenge of the 2030 Development Agenda and the specific agreed-upon SDGs.

“Business has made continuing contributions to sustainable development and wishes to encourage greater collaboration and partnership between the public and private sectors as we collectively make progress towards new practical SDGs in September and beyond,” said USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson.

This is a landmark year that will define the global development agenda for the next 15 years. The financing needed to achieve the SDGs by 2030 will far surpass current official development flows, so the international community will have to leverage complementary forms of financing, including from the private sector.

Progress at Addis Ababa Conference

At the UN’s Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) in Ethiopia July, UN member states established a new financing framework to support sustainable development for the next 15 years. The final text—known as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda—sets out the means of implementation, including technology, domestic resource mobilization and blended finance and investment for the SDGs. USCIB played a central role in marshaling business input into FfD3, having worked actively with members and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) to ensure that the private sector’s voice was heard at the development finance conference.

USCIB and its global network are also playing a lead role in providing business views to the UN and its member states on the SDGs, emphasizing the importance of integrating broader environmental, economic and social elements – including targets for improved national governance – into a wider concept of sustainable development.

This year, USCIB launched its “Business for 2030” website, designed to showcase the private sector’s contributions to the UN SDGs. The site is a resource for those who wish to learn more about the UN’s 2030 Development Agenda and its impacts on international business, and it serves as a catalog that illustrates how private companies are helping to achieve each one of the SDGs. Dozens of USCIB members have contributed case studies to Business for 2030, and we encourage others to get involved.

“Sustainable development is everyone’s business,” said Robinson. “The private sector is demonstrating that it can and should be a valuable partner in the UN’s mission to raise living standards and promote a cleaner, healthier and fairer world.”

ICC Launches Global Export Finance Committee

Published on September 11, 2015

The launch of the ICC Global Finance Committee took place on September 7 in Barcelona, Spain.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) launched the “ICC Global Export Finance Committee,” an export finance working group supported by many leading banks across the export finance industry.

Operating under the umbrella of the ICC Banking Commission, the committee is the first step towards building a real global export finance community – representing medium- and long-term (MLT) export finance banks.

The Global Export Finance Committee has three key objectives:

To create a credible standing global discussion forum of banking experts in MLT export financing,
To create a representative body to discuss industry matters with various stakeholders,
To advocate for and help develop improvements and efficiencies through the standardization and harmonization of processes and regulations.

“The Global Export Finance Committee fills a much needed role in the export finance industry,” said Eric de Jonge, head of structured export finance at ING Bank, who chairs the working group. “It aims to not only act as a discussion forum and a body to exchange information and views on export finance but also to enable improvements and increase the efficiency of the processes and regulations governing the export financing industry as a whole.”

Although the export financing industry as a whole is relatively small, it serves an important purpose for OECD governments as well as governments in emerging markets, enabling and facilitating international trade and economic activity. Indeed, governments in many countries are exploring how they can more efficiently support exports, investments and trade.

Not only has the industry observed changes in regulatory requirements such as Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) and Basel III, it also faces changes in the value chain concerning Export Credit Agencies (ECAs). These developments, together with the involvement of the capital markets, mean it is necessary for banks active across the industry to reach a common approach.

ICC has already made a first step towards reaching a common approach through the inclusion of MLT trade and export finance products in the influential ICC Trade Register Report. The dedicated Trade Register working group has successfully evolved into a platform of active banks that are responsible for ECAs, and that supports transaction data gathering.

While the Trade Register working group focuses primarily on data gathering, there are many more topics relevant to the export finance industry. Cooperation with ECAs, advocacy before governmental and regulatory bodies, standardization, and harmonization, as well as the exchange of views and data to the extent allowed under anti-competition laws, are just a few of the areas that can be explored further by the ICC Global Export Finance Committee.

Download ICC Global Export Finance PDF Document here

New ICC Dispute Board Rules Enter Into Force on October 1

Published on September 11, 2015

New rules governing ICC Dispute Boards will come into effect on October 1. A half-day global launch, scheduled to take place on September 28, 2015 at ICC Global Headquarters in Paris, will provide an introduction to the nature, purpose and operation of the new rules and offer a chance to discuss the role of dispute boards in preventing disputes and resolving them quickly.

Dispute boards are independent bodies designed to avoid and resolve disagreements between parties as they arise during the performance of an often long-term or mid-term contract.

“The new ICC Dispute Board Rules increase the emphasis on dispute avoidance,” said Peter Wolrich, chairman of the ICC Task Force revising the rules. “In fact one of the most valuable functions of a dispute board is to help the parties to avoid disputes, either by encouraging them to do so on their own or by providing them with informal assistance.”

The replacement of current rules dating from 2004 follows three years of revision undertaken by the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR that started in 2012 and received broad input from the international dispute board community, including from the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) and members of other Dispute Resolution Board Associations.

Business Leaders Deliver Priorities to the G20

Published on September 11, 2015

More than 1,400 business leaders and CEOs from 65 countries gathered in Turkey, Ankara for the 2015 Business-20 (B20) Conference from September 3 to 5. The three-day event marked the completion this year’s B20 recommendations and provided an opportunity for the business community to share its priorities with Turkish President Erdoğan ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Antalya in November. Turkey is the G20 host nation for 2015. Ronnie Goldberg, USCIB’s senior counsel, attended the conference.

During his opening remarks President Erdoğan thanked B20 Turkey Chair Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, who also serves on the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Executive Board, for hosting an effective B20 process.

“The B20 is the most inclusive of all G20 engagement groups and the regional consultations and events organized by B20 Turkey have made the B20 the most important business platform in the world,” said President Erdoğan. “Turkey will support the B20 recommendations at the G20 Summit in November.”

Rob Mulligan, USCIB’s senior vice president for policy and government affairs, participated directly in meetings of the B20 Trade Taskforce, the recommendations of which are available on the B20 website. At the meetings, Mulligan helped focus the taskforce on 3 recommendations:

pressing for ratifications and implementation of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement;
rolling back protectionist measures with a focus on localization barriers to trade;
improving the global trade system for the emerging digital economy including rolling back cross-border data flow restrictions.

Several of USCIB’s member companies had representatives active on the various B20 taskforces.

ICC and USCIB Chairman Terry McGraw led a delegation of the ICC G20 Advisory Group to Ankara for discussions with business and government representatives. ICC Leadership actively participated in the conference, with McGraw, ICC Secretary General John Danilovich and ICC G20 CEO Advisory Group Chairman Marcus Wallenberg delivering business priorities to the opening plenary sessions.

“Growth and job creation should remain at the top of the G20’s priorities,” said McGraw. “These objectives can be achieved by promoting structural reform within G20 economies; by liberalizing trade and investment; by ensuring well-regulated, growth-enhancing financial markets; and by creating a healthy environment for innovation and new businesses.”

Addressing the G20’s past performance and growing demands for global governance, Wallenberg suggested that the G20 focus its attention on implementation of previously agreed reforms and commitments before introducing new areas of work. To illustrate his point Mr Wallenberg highlighted the ICC G20 Business Scorecard as a tool to monitor the G20’s performance on implementing B20 recommendations.

A highlight of the B20 Conference was the official introduction of the World SME Forum (WSF) as a mechanism for implementing the many SME recommendations developed under B20 Turkey. The WSF is a new global platform co-founded by ICC and the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) to amplify the voice of SMEs and unlock their potential to stabilize the economy and stimulate economic growth, trade and employment.

“Never before has the B20 taken such a robust approach to correcting the imbalances in the SME sector”, said Mr Danilovich during a special plenary session on the WSF. “I would like to thank the Turkish government and B20 Turkey for championing economic inclusiveness and support to the SME sector as key priorities in 2015.”

With over 21 panel sessions and 123 speakers, the Ankara conference was the largest business gathering in the B20’s 6-year history.

The 2015 G20 Leaders’ Summit will be held in Antalya on November 15-16.

B20 Conference: USCIB’s Global Network Tackles Employment Challenges

Published on September 8, 2015

The International Organization of Employers (IOE), the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to the OECD, and USCIB member Deloitte have joined forces to take stock of labor market policies impacting employment opportunities for young people across the G20 and beyond.

The IOE hosted an event in Ankara, Turkey on September 2 to highlight joint work with BIAC and Deloitte on cataloging and assessing youth employment policies. Turkey currently holds the presidency of the G20. The B20 Conference is being held in Ankara, Turkey from September 3 to 5, 2015. Ronnie Goldberg, USCIB’s senior counsel, attended the conference.

Initial findings of the joint report identify four main challenges to hiring and retaining younger workers. Nearly 30 IOE member federations contributed their diverse country experiences of youth unemployment-related issues, which include lack of appropriate training in job readiness and skills; a shortage of job opportunities and entrepreneurial companies; high costs of hiring, coupled with diminishing subsidies for employers and the expectations of young people themselves.

While feedback suggests that different policies need to be developed according to national circumstances, employer organizations called for holistic and coherent policy approaches within and between countries.

“Understanding the drivers behind policy successes around the world and decisively acting on that information in future policy making is the best way to inject more dynamism into the labor market, strengthen links between education and employment, and remove barriers to hiring young people,” said IOE President Daniel Funes de Rioja, “The IOE and its partners, thanks to the expertise and experiences within our global network of 155 members around the world, are well placed to input future policy development in the G20 and beyond.”

Also at the B20 Conference, Funes presented five key recommendations on September 4 to the Joint Consultation of G20 Labor and Finance Ministers. The consultation provided a rare opportunity to discuss employment issues with fiscal policy makers.

Funes presented five key measures for creating jobs by stimulating private sector-led growth:

pursue sound macro-economic policies such as price stability and fiscal prudence
develop infrastructure strategies at the country level linked to G20 growth aspirations
encourage open and competitive markets, and resistance to protectionism in all its forms
put in place labor market policies that promote flexible work arrangements
support small businesses by improving access to financing for small- and medium-sized businesses

Rioja pointed out the dearth of skills in the labor market. If education and training were better matched with the needs of employers, it would allow existing job vacancies to be filled. He will also highlight the general lack of jobs in many countries and draw attention to the barriers to business in creating employment, such as unfavorable regulatory frameworks.

ICC Open Markets Index: More Effort Needed on Trade

Published on September 3, 2015

Despite repeated pledges to enable trade as a driver of growth and job creation, G20 economies are failing to demonstrate global leadership on trade openness according to the ICC Open Markets Index 2015 (OMI), published on September 3.

The report – commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) – shows that G20 nations rank below the global standard in terms of openness to trade, with only Germany placing among the world’s top 20 open markets. Singapore and Hong Kong head the 2015 rankings for the third successive edition of the report, far outstripping major economies such as the United States in terms of trade openness.

The Index scores 75 countries on a scale of one to six on four key factors: observed trade openness, trade policy, openness to foreign direct investment and trade-enabling infrastructure. In doing so, the Index also monitors government follow-through on longstanding G20 commitments to boost global trade flows, including pledges made at last year’s leaders’ Summit in Brisbane, Australia.

The latest edition of the Index reveals that 16 of the G20 economies score only average or below average in terms of their overall openness to trade. The two lowest-scoring G20 economies are Brazil and India, though both economies have seen an increase in their score from last year.

“As world leaders look for new engines of growth in the current economic environment, the OMI data shows that there is still substantial scope for G20 leaders to take action to boost global trade,” said ICC Secretary General John Danilovich. “Rolling back protectionism and implementing reforms to facilitate trade flows should be cornerstones of a revitalized G20 agenda to promote renewed growth and stability in the global economy.”

USCIB’s Meyerstein Reappointed to NAC for Labor Provisions of U.S. Free Trade Agreements

Published on September 2, 2015

On August 25, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez appointed Ariel Meyerstein to serve another term as member of the National Advisory Committee for Labor Provisions of U.S. Free Trade Agreements (NAC).

In this capacity, Meyerstein will serve on a multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee that advises the Secretary of Labor through the Bureau of International Labor Affairs on the implementation of labor provisions in existing U.S. free trade agreements with labor provisions (currently 19).

“I’m honored to continue serving in this important role,” said Meyerstein. As a member of the NAC, Meyerstein will help assure that the implementation of existing agreements help to level the playing field for global businesses by continuing to develop U.S. trade partners’ capacity for regulating their own labor markets by assuring for worker protections in line with the standards in U.S. law and policy.

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