USCIB Member Testimony on the Investigation into Digital Trade in the U.S. and Global Economies
Policy Areas Archives
FAO Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment
Helen Medina, USCIB’s senior director for product policy and innovation, has been working with the International Agri-Food Network (IAFN) to provide input into the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set of Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment (RAI) in the context of food security and nutrition.
The objective of the principles, as requested by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), is to promote responsible investments in agriculture and food systems that contribute to food security and nutrition and support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security. The principles address all stakeholders that are involved in, benefit from, or are affected by investments in food systems.
Most recently, Medina posted comments on behalf of USCIB to the FAO’s Forum on Food Security and Nutrition. USCIB will continue to monitor progress, as well as provide comments to the Committee on World Food Security’s consultative process, in conjunction with its partner, the IAFN. The Committee on Food Security’s RAI principles will be presented and negotiated at a plenary session in May in Rome.
Thus far, USCIB has made several recommendations in regards to the agriculture investment principles, including on the role of the private sector, and in the areas of investment and the environment, and monitoring and evaluation of implementation of principles. USCIB has had concerns in regards to the monitoring and evaluation, as well as the roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, the principles do not address the question of who will monitor progress, or whether there will be an entity to which companies and countries will report.
USCIB supports the following messages:
- The principles should be forward thinking and encourage the right actions in a manner that respects the broad diversity of the agri-food system.
- One investment cannot achieve all things. For instance, we want to encourage linking to smallholders, but not every investment is in primary production. It may be further down the value chain or it may not be particularly relevant in that geography.
- Environmental impacts of investment projects should be assessed and measures taken to encourage sustainable resource use while minimizing the risk of negative impacts and mitigating them.
- Good governance structures are required; domestic markets and foreign investment require the same conducive operating environment, including: peace and stability, the rule of law, good governance with accountability and transparency, the absence of corruption, adequate infrastructure, an educated workforce, clear property rights, open markets and trade, and enforceable contracts.
- Clearly articulated national priorities for development can help guide investment and assess the most suited investment proposals.
- Investments should take place in: sustainable agricultural practices; rural infrastructure, storage capacities and related technologies; research and development on sustainable agricultural technologies; developing strong agricultural cooperatives and value chains; reducing post-harvest and other food losses and waste throughout the food supply chain.
- All stakeholders involved and affected by large scale investments should be part of the consultation and assessment process.
- Both public and private sector investment can contribute to develop a robust agricultural sector and value chain – both need the same conducive operating environment, offering predictability, transparency, accountability, and stability.
Staff contacts: Helen Medina
Making the Case for Business Engagement in the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Following up on its January 31 paper on essential elements of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, USCIB is actively working to secure meaningful business input in the development of the SDGs and the UN’s Post-2015 Development Agenda. The SDGs are viewed as the UN’s successor to the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000.
The January USCIB paper identified four overarching elements as essential to the business contribution in broad range of proposed SDG themes: good governance, economic growth and empowerment, innovation, and infrastructure. It also called for substantive business engagement to participate in and inform the UN SDG deliberations.
“The U.S. business community has a strong stake in meaningful and practical SDGs,” said USCIB Vice President Norine Kennedy, who spearheads USCIB’s efforts to engage with international institutions as well as our environment and sustainability work. “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.”
“Business has a critical role”
Kennedy joined USCIB members Ann Condon (General Electric), who chairs USCIB’s Environment Committee Chair, and Tam Nguyen (Bechtel), co-chair of USCIB’s SDG Working Group, as a featured speaker at a February Chevron Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Entitled Business in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the forum served to underscore the business case for private sector-led investment in development. Speakers emphasized the importance of good governance and economic growth and empowerment, and drew attention to USCIB’s recommendations.
“Business has a critical role to play, said Condon. “For example, investment flows dwarf government development aid. Businesses can leverage their resources and expertise in ways that drive growth in developing economies and bring innovative solutions to solve sustainable development challenges.”
Nguyen agreed. “Unlike the MDGs a decade ago, U.S. multinationals are more informed and engaged,” he told the forum. “They have shifted from mere observers to participants in promoting sustainable development.”
Other speakers at the CSIS forum included White House Counselor John Podesta and Daniella Ballou-Aares of the State Department.
Target for completion is 2015
The SDGs are slated to be completed and delivered to the UN General Assembly for approval in 2015, and the first round of deliberations to gather government views concluded on February 7. The international community is now awaiting a UN document compiling “priority areas” for further discussion on potential SDG goals and targets. Once it is released, USCIB will analyze this document for business issues requiring our engagement.
The UN SDG deliberations resume on March 3. USCIB will also develop elaborated papers on each of the four USCIB elements and other materials. Future USCIB action would also seek to inform government discussions on metrics for private sector investment in development.
Other discussions, convened by the president of the UN General Assembly and the UN Experts Group on Finance, will also contribute to developing the structure, priorities and resources needed for the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda. USCIB will continue to monitor and inform these deliberations through its SDG working group, which is co-chaired by Brian Lowry (Monsanto) and Nguyen, and participate through the Global Business Alliance for Post-2015 Development to convey U.S. business views.
Staff contact: Norine Kennedy
Ambitious 2014 US Trade Agenda Hailed
Washington, D.C., March 4, 2014 – The United States Council for International Business (USCIB) welcomed today’s release of President Obama’s 2014 U.S. Trade Agenda. The agenda outlines an ambitious set of priorities for expanding American trade and investment around the world, in support of expanded job growth and enhanced U.S. competitiveness.
“We agree with the president that international trade and investment play a critical role in creating jobs, promoting growth and strengthening the middle class,” said USCIB Senior Vice President Rob Mulligan.”The American business community is working hard to advance and support this agenda both at home and abroad.”
“President Obama’s trade strategy for 2014 is driven by a commitment to create jobs, promote growth, and strengthen the middle class through the creation of new export opportunities for American farmers, workers, and businesses,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. “In the coming year, USTR will continue to execute the President’s trade vision that relies on opening markets, leveling the playing field for American workers and producers, and fully enforcing our trade rights around the world.”
Mulligan said the USTR agenda dovetailed well with USCIB’s own 2014 Global Trade and Investment Agenda, Key goals in the USCIB agenda include:
- reaching bipartisan agreement on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation
- completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations
- finalizing agreement on expansion of the Information Technology Agreement
- making significant progress on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as well as the Trade in International Services Agreement negotiations, and
- advancing discussions of a U.S.-China bilateral investment treaty.
“We are working closely with USTR and the other relevant U.S. agencies to advance this ambitious agenda across the board,” said Charles R. Johnston, chair of USCIB’s Trade and Investment Committee and managing director of global government affairs at Citigroup. “In addition, USCIB will work with its overseas business partners to foster support for U.S. trade and investment goals among our trading partners.”
USCIB serves on the steering committee of the Trade Benefits America Coalition (www.tradebenefitsamerica.org), which seeks to enhance understanding among lawmakers and the public about the benefits of U.S. trade agreements and advocates for passage of Trade Promotion Authority. USCIB also plays a leading role in U.S. business coalitions on the TTIP and TPP talks and has provided industry insight to U.S. negotiators on many aspects of these negotiations.
“The most essential piece of the trade puzzle is Trade Promotion Authority,” said Johnston. “Without TPA, we cannot negotiate effectively, and Congress’s ability to help guide U.S. trade policy is limited. For these reasons, we urge the Obama administration and Congress to work together to swiftly pass effective TPA legislation.”
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 the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Organization of Employers and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD, 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
+1 212.703.5043, jhuneke@uscib.org
OECD Global Forum on Responsible Business Conduct
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
USCIB Competition Committee Leadership Transition
It was the end of an era at the February 20 meeting of USCIB’s Competition Committee in Washington, D.C., as longtime Chair Michael Blechman (Kaye Scholer) and Vice Chair Jim Rill (Baker Botts), stepped down and passed the baton to new Chair John Taladay (Baker Botts) and Vice Chair Jennifer Patterson (Kaye Scholer).
Blechman and Rill, who have been esteemed and productive leaders of the committee for 20 years, said it has been a great pleasure to work together. Rob Mulligan, USCIB’s senior vice president for policy and government affairs, marked the leadership transition by recognizing Blechman and Rill’s contributions and welcoming Taladay and Patterson. USCIB looks forward to working with the new Competition Committee leadership and to continuing the committee’s high-quality work.
Taladay is currently the vice chair of the Competition Committee at BIAC, the Business and Industry Advisory Council to the OECD, a lead drafter on consultations and responses to the OECD’s Competition Committee, and a non-governmental advisor to the International Competition Network.
Patterson co-chairs the International Chamber of Commerce’s Task Force on Due Process, and also serves as a non-governmental advisor at the International Competition Network. Taladay and Patterson will work with all members to ensure that USCIB’s Competition Committee remains an active and engaged forum for dialogue, puts forth strong messaging on important antitrust issues and coordinates with USCIB’s partner organizations.
The committee was also honored to host Chairwoman Edith Ramirez of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for remarks over lunch regarding the global policy direction of the FTC’s antitrust activities and her recent meetings with officials from China’s antitrust agencies.
Staff contact: Justine Badimon
USCIB Takes Part in APEC Chemicals Meetings
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
Taking Our TTIP Agenda to Europe
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.
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
USCIB Delivers Business Recommendations on UN Sustainable Development Goals
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
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
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