This article is taken directly from the source cited
By David J. Lynch
Published March 17, 2021
Katherine Tai, a longtime congressional staff lawyer, won Senate confirmation on Wednesday as the first woman of color to serve as the top U.S. trade negotiator.
The Senate approved her nomination 98-0, marking a rare bipartisan agreement in a deeply-divided Washington.
Among her first tasks will be advising the president on what to do about existing tariffs on most imported Chinese products, presiding over enforcement of a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and seeking a negotiated end to a long-running commercial dispute with the European Union.
Tai will be a key player in crafting the “worker-centered” trade policy that President Biden has promised and making sure his efforts to promote domestic manufacturing comply with U.S. trade commitments.
Tai, 46, will become a Cabinet officer after a career of behind-the-scenes work as a government and corporate lawyer. She must find her footing in a policy scrum crowded with longtime Biden associates such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who has called for recalibrating trade policy to deliver higher wages for workers rather than to open foreign markets for corporations.
“It’s going to be reshaping trade policy initiatives to centrally prioritize making sure the policy is beneficial to U.S. workers and the U.S. economy,” said Claire Reade, senior counsel at Arnold & Porter. “This is a fundamental shift.”
Tai, whose parents immigrated from Taiwan, is the only Asian American woman to be appointed to a Cabinet-level position under Biden. Another top pick, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, withdrew as a nominee to lead the White House budget office. The Biden administration has faced criticism from lawmakers and advocacy groups for not naming an Asian American or Pacific Islander to a major Cabinet post.
Source: The Washington Post
