United States-The Obama Administration on trade and farming.

UNITED STATES-THE NEW REGIME AND THE EFFECT ON FARMING.

The prospects for trade initiatives this year are very different than the last time a Democratic president took office with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.

When I arrived for work at the United States trade representative’s office in summer 1993, Ambassador Mickey Kantor was already negotiating side agreements with Canada and Mexico on behalf of President Bill Clinton to get the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress; he was also finishing the Uruguay Round of trade talks that would establish the World Trade Organization.

Now, as President Barack Obama prepares to submit his first trade policy agenda to Congress on March 1, many in the business community are worried about his commitment to open markets. However, the team he is building at USTR appears ready to act with the firm support of the president.

Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, awaiting confirmation as the trade ambassador for the White House, supported NAFTA. And he was known to encourage international engagement from Dallas companies by holding an exporting competition to win slots on trade missions. Julianna Smoot, USTR’s incoming chief of staff, was finance director for the Obama presidential campaign, and congressional affairs chief Daniel Sepulveda comes straight from Obama’s Senate staff. Meanwhile, sitting just steps from the president’s Oval Office is chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who managed the Clinton White House effort to get NAFTA passed.

The president appears poised to take on the fundamental fault line in the trade community: how to expand the benefits to more American workers and limit the risks. Some business leaders are waiting to find out what new agreements will be adopted and the price labor allies will extract for any new deals.

Despite the momentous May 10, 2007, agreement between the Bush administration and Democrats in Congress to include labor and environmental standards in the meat of future trade agreements, the Obama administration seems poised to put its own stamp on the framework for trade negotiations, making sure the more skeptical members of the House feel a part of any broad consensus. Meanwhile, the business community is waiting to see what happens with the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round negotiations and the three pending trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.