Communication Department Archives

USCIB Pushes for a Pro-Business Policy in Multilateral Forums

Published on June 27, 2017

As an increasing number of multilateral organizations consider proposals to keep business out of policy deliberations, USCIB met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations (IO) Affairs Nerissa Cook on June 26 to encourage the administration to implement a consistent pro-business access policy in multilateral forums and to build on existing positive interactions between the UN and U.S. business.

The State Department has the lead for managing U.S. government engagement with international organizations, including many in the UN system which take decisions impacting U.S. business interests from the standpoint of regulations, norms and standards in the global marketplace.  USCIB members have voiced concerns about several of these bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), whose rules limit engagement with some private sector interests and set business-discriminatory precedents across the UN system.

“We appreciate the strong efforts across the State Department, IO and EB to advance and protect U.S. business interests,” said Mike Michener, USCIB’s vice president for product policy and innovation, who leads USCIB work in the health, agriculture, and chemicals policy.  “American business strongly supports continued U.S. government engagement in multilateral forums particularly where decisions are being made that impact U.S. business bottom lines.  Moreover, business brings its commitment, innovation, know-how, and investment to solving the very problems that these UN agencies seek to address via the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. UN agencies stand to benefit from employing the inclusive multi-stakeholder partnership approach used by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and the Montreal, Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm treaties.”

In concluding the discussion, USCIB President and CEO, Peter Robinson, highlighted the practical importance of good governance principles throughout the UN, stating, “access, transparency and accountability to the U.S. private sector are prerequisites for business engagement in implementation of UN initiatives and policies.”

 

Donnelly Talks NAFTA in California

Published on June 27, 2017

USCIB Vice President for Investment and Trade Shaun Donnelly traveled to Riverside, California to address the Inland Southern California World Affairs Council on “NAFTA: Is It Good or Bad for America?” on June 22.  Clue – the correct answer is GOOD!  Donnelly, a retired U.S. diplomat and trade negotiator, laid out the history of NAFTA and broader U.S. trade policy and the key issues currently on the table as the U.S. government heads into a major effort to update the 23 year-old agreement with the Canadian and Mexican governments.

Addressing an audience of academics, students, business and community leaders plus Mexican consular representatives from the local consulate, Donnelly made clear the strong and broad support for NAFTA, and an updated, strengthened NAFTA, across USCIB’s membership and the broader business community.

“NAFTA has, on balance, clearly been advantageous to all three countries,” noted Donnelly.  “It’s time to update the agreement to address new issues but we should be thinking in terms of ‘a facelift, not a lobotomy.’”

USCIB To Testify on NAFTA at Interagency Panel

Published on June 27, 2017

Following up on the June 12 formal written submission to the Office of the US Trade Representative, USCIB will testify before the USTR-led interagency panel on “NAFTA Modernization” this week.  USCIB Vice President for Investment and Trade Shaun Donnelly will participate on Panel 8 “General Trade Matters” at 4:00pm today.  The hearings, which are open to the public, are scheduled to run 9:00 am to 8:00 pm at the Main Hearing Room of the U.S. International Trade Commission, 500 E Street, SW, Washington, DC 20436.

Donnelly will draw on the USCIB written submission, developed with strong input from its members across its cross-sectoral membership.

The group calls on the administration to update the 20 year-old pact to accommodate new realities in global commerce, including the rise of the digital economy, while keeping what works from the original agreement.

“Our member companies, who collectively encompass America’s most successful enterprises on the global stage, strongly support modernization of NAFTA,” said USCIB President and CEO Peter M. Robinson. “But they are united in believing that this must take place as part of a broader strategy to open international markets for U.S. companies, and remove barriers and unfair trade practices in support of U.S. jobs.”

USCIB calls upon the administration to update and strengthen key NAFTA provisions, including the liberalization and protection of investment flows, protection of intellectual property, trade facilitation and improved agricultural market access. It also recommends tackling new areas not included or anticipated in the original agreement a quarter-century ago, such as the digital provision of goods and services, data localization requirements, treatment of state-owned enterprises. It further urges U.S. negotiators to work closely with a range of private-sector stakeholders to ensure that a revamped agreement meets business needs in the 21st century.

USCIB Members Play Lead Role at 2017 SelectUSA

Published on June 23, 2017

President Donald Trump‘s administration has adopted and expanded upon the Obama Administration’s “SelectUSA” annual conference to promote foreign direct investment (FDI) into the U.S. The 2017 “SelectUSA” conference was held June 18-20 at National Harbor in suburban Maryland, outside Washington.  Senior Executives from USCIB member companies including General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and UPS President of Global Public Affairs Laura Lane, as well as representatives from Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, AT&T and JPMorgan Chase shared the podium as speakers in plenary, panels and breakout sessions with U.S. cabinet members, state development officials, and foreign business leaders.

USCIB congratulates the Administration for the successful conference and commends them for recognizing the importance of FDI for U.S. economic growth, global competitiveness and job creation.  Details on the SelectUSA’17 conference are available here.  Questions about SelectUSA or U.S. government support for foreign investment into the United States should be addressed to SelectUSA office at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

USCIB and ILO Hold Dialogue on Disabilities in the Workplace

Published on June 23, 2017
USCIB Senior Counsel Ronnie Goldberg facilitates panel at the joint USCIB-ILO-AT&T event on Disability Inclusion in Washington DC

U.S. companies are increasingly sensitive to the importance of enhancing workplace diversity, particularly for people with disabilities. In an effort to promote U.S. company membership in the ILO Global Business and Disability Network (GBDN), USCIB, AT&T and the ILO held an event at the AT&T Forum in Washington DC on June 20 for business leaders, “Promoting disability inclusion globally.”

The GBDN is a network of multinational enterprises, employers’ organizations, business networks and disabled persons’ organizations who share the conviction that people with disabilities have talents and skills that can enhance virtually any business and can be a powerful tool for sharing global best practices and accessing relevant networks around the world. In addition to hosting the event, AT&T was also a featured speaker and has a strong corporate commitment to employing persons with disabilities.

USCIB Senior Counsel Ronnie Goldberg gave opening remarks and facilitated a panel on “Best Practices in the Employment of Persons with Disabilities in the Global South,” which also featured speakers from L’Oreal, Repsol, Accenture and Cisco.

Panelists discussed some of their company initiatives such as Cisco’s Project Life Changer and Accenture’s Tech4Good, which support employees with disabilities through technological and work culture integration. Many of the companies discussed the importance of building an employable skill-set while others, such as Cisco, go even further to alter the recruitment process, placing more emphasis on internships and experience.

“Smart companies have known for some time that there is a robust business case for workplace diversity in general and for hiring people with disabilities in particular,” said Goldberg. “All the data suggests that people with disabilities are productive, reliable and highly motivated employees.  They can also constitute a significant market, and some companies have prospered by developing products and services for people with disabilities, their families and friends.”

Goldberg noted that USCIB members are global enterprises, with employees and customers in every part of the world.  “The network and opportunities for best practice and information sharing provided by the ILO GBDN can be an important resource for MNEs as they devise and implement their human resource, product development, and marketing strategies in diverse communities across the globe,” she said.

The event also featured USCIB members from Deloitte, Boeing and Accenture.

Celebrating 80 Years of the ICC Marketing Code

Published on June 22, 2017
ICC Marketing & Advertising Commission members met in Paris on June 16.

USCIB and others in the International Chamber of Commerce family are celebrating this year’s 80th anniversary of the ICC Consolidated Code of Marketing and Advertising Communication Practice.

Earlier this week, ICC presented the Code during a networking cocktail hosted in partnership with the French Association of the Communications Agencies, at the French Camp Cannes held on the margins of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The event followed the semi-annual meeting of ICC’s Commission on Marketing and Advertising, which took place in Paris on June 16 and was chaired by Brent Sanders, associate general counsel with Microsoft and chair of USCIB’s Marketing and Advertising Committee.

During the celebratory event in Cannes, Ximena Tapias Delporte, vice chair of the ICC Commission on Marketing and Advertising and president of the Colombian Commission on Advertising Self-Regulation, joined Stéphane Martin, director general of the French self-regulatory organization ARPP and chair of the European Advertising Standards Alliance, to share perspectives on the Code and its broader application at international level as the foundational instrument of advertising self-regulation.

The ICC Code was also presented at the International Advertising Association (IAA) cabana in Cannes, where Carla Michelotti, vice chair of USCIB’s Marketing and Advertising Committee and vice president of the IAA, interviewed Martin on using the Code to ensure best practices in the advertising industry and to build trust with consumers.

“Over the past 80 years, the ICC Code has played a key role in providing principles that help build trust with consumers, assuring them of advertising that is honest, legal, decent and truthful,” Martin said during the interview.

According to USCIB Vice President Jonathan Huneke, at the ICC commission meeting in Paris, members discussed possible revision of the Code in the coming years to more fully reflect changes in technology and advertising practice, and finalized a draft ICC guide on responsible mobile marketing communications. The latter document is expected to be finalized and issued by ICC in the coming weeks.

Robinson’s Op-ed in The Hill on Modernizing NAFTA

Published on June 21, 2017

USCIB President and CEO Peter M. Robinson wrote an Op-ed in The Hill, “How to Modernize NAFTA: First, do no Harm.”

Robinson cites a recent study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, since the agreement’s implementation, U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico has more than tripled, with a positive impact on U.S. GDP of 0.5 percent, or several billion dollars of added growth per year.

However, he also writes that NAFTA needs to be updated in a way that solidifies the gains Americans have reaped from these transformations, while further enhancing our competitiveness.

The Op-ed is available here.

USCIB Urges Administration to Push Anti-Bribery Agenda in G20

Published on June 19, 2017

USCIB joined with the Coalition for Integrity, the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable and the AFL-CIO in a June 13 letter to President Donald Trump urging the administration to push aggressively for other leading global trading nations to match U.S. efforts against international bribery and corruption.  Specifically, the group urged the administration to press all of the 41 signatory countries to the OECD’s Anti-bribery Convention to take concrete steps to strengthen their implementation and enforcement of their foreign bribery laws.

In the context of the G20, USCIB joined in urging the administration to press for all G20 countries to become signatories and full partners in that OECD convention by the end of 2018.  Currently four G20 members (China, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia) have not signed the OECD Anti-bribery Convention.

The G20 Summit meeting will be held July 7-9 in Hamburg, Germany.

 

 

USCIB Hosted Experts Discuss UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights

Published on June 19, 2017

USCIB hosted a webinar on the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights on June 13, featuring Robert McCorquodale, director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and Douglass Cassel, professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. The webinar discussed the treaty background, its current status, and possible next steps in advance of the third session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG) in October 2017.

The treaty process began on June 26, 2014, when the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 26/9 by which it decided “to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, whose mandate shall be to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The first two sessions of the open-ended IWG were to “be dedicated to conducting constructive deliberations on the content, scope, nature and form of the future international instrument.” The first session of the IWG was held in July 2015, and the second session in October 2016. The summary documents from the second session can be found here.

Prior to October’s third session, the Ecuadorian chair of the IWG has been tasked with drafting proposed elements for a treaty, and these points will be presented to the states in advance of the October meeting.  The webinar discussed three possible outcomes for the treaty: a relatively modest treaty with reporting and due diligence requirements to establish a level playing field, with an international monitoring system for the states’ obligations; a “maximalist treaty” with international courts, international legal requirements for business, due diligence reporting, and other requirements, as argued for by some human rights groups; or no treaty at all resulting from this process.

If USCIB members would like to access a recording of the webinar, please contact Elizabeth Kim (ekim@uscib.org).

SDG Business Forum Will Report on Private Sector Achievements

Published on June 16, 2017

Following the success of last year’s inaugural forum, the second annual SDG Business Forum will take place at the United Nations on July 18, 2017 during the ministerial segment of the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development. Co-hosted by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), and the UN Global Compact, and organized in collaboration with the Global Business Alliance (GBA) for 2030 – including USCIB, the SDG Business Forum will convene leaders from business and government, together with the heads of UN agencies, key international organizations, and civil society groups to delve into the role business will play in delivering the 2030 Agenda.

Featuring a showcase review of business engagement on the 7 goals in focus at this year’s HLPF, as well as individual sessions examining investment, partnerships, and monitoring, this event will foster robust dialogue between governments and the private sector on critical issues and the way forward. The Forum will report on significant achievements and commitments undertaken by business and gauge private sector efforts to catalyze sustainable growth and development during this critical implementation phase. Ranging from SMEs to multinational corporations, the global business community is committed to contribute to the success of the 2030 Agenda and the realization of a long-lasting, prosperous future for all.

For more information and registration please visit: http://www.sdgbusinessforum.com/