[inaudible] it afternoon. Welcome, glad to see everyone here. If nothing else you are staying out of the washington heat in the airconditioning and enjoying the launch. My name is john. Im a professor of economics, business, Public Policy at georgetown universitys Mcdonough School of business. Im also the executive director of our Host Institution today, the Georgetown Center for business and Public Policy. We are delighted to have a discussion on something very important, near interior to the Georgetown Center, that is the subject of trade policy. In particular, we will examine the issue of trade remedies, think tariffs, quotas, and the like, remedy unfair trade practices. Or, are they themselves simply protection policies. Todays panel will be moderated by my colleague bob, he senior industry fellow at the center, he has taken a lead in promoting and advancing the georgetown hill and has gotten so popular over the years. Again we are glad to have you here. I wont steal bobs thunder but in terms of introducing the panelist jose its an extraordinary Blue Ribbon Group of people we will be talking with today. When we looked at the list of registrants for today, we saw a number of experts in the audience. We wanted to make sure to have ample time for questions and answers. In that regard, we would love to hear from you. Before mean your questions as you can the panelist speak, but when it is time for q a, please do the following. These razor hand and wait for microphone to be brought to you. This event is being recorded and being broadcast live. It is a nice idea to identify yourself and identify your organization. With that, i will turn it over to bob who will introduce the panelists. Thank you. Thank you john. Thanks everyone for being here. We are writing a dramatic wave of change in u. S. Trade policy. Some think this bodes well, others think it will rip the fabric of our business relationships with countries deemed to be taken advantage of the u. S. , such as treaties like nafta. From this point of view i call your attention to an editorial in todays wall street journal. At the core of the controversy is the role of trade remedies. These are provisions in u. S. Law that allowed the u. S. To remedy Foreign Trade practices or something that may threaten the nations security. These are enacted by congress over decades, while they are an accepted pillar of u. S. Trade policy, many believe at the end of the day they dont benefit the u. S. Economy. So, they have continued and contained provisions that allow the executive, the president , to provide a restraint by tempering their reach and the impacts the remedies in the national interest. Now, we are in a position where the president seems not to be interested in restraint. I quoted Business Group on monday. For decades, washington has allowed other nations to wipe out millions of american jobs to unfair trade practices. Wait until you see whats up for you. Today, we have a panel representing different viewpoints. A begin by introducing briefly members of the panel starting in my rights. The first is chad, who is at the Peterson Institute for International Economics of the senior fellow. By the way, the bios are more complete in your hand out. He served previously as senior economist at the white house and on the council of economic advisers and most recently as a lead economist at the world bank. Steve is a partner and former trade council to the house ways and means committee, subcommittee and trade. Im glad to say that i have been able to work with him over a number of years. He is now assisting International Trade law and policy clients. Next, is tom who is president of the u. S. Trade the, he asked me not to try to pronounce that. And organization of manufacturers, workers and others dedicated to enhancing u. S. Trade laws. Hes been engaged in u. S. Steel policy for many years. Next is bill, a distinguished fellow he works principally with the trade policy initiative, he served for a long time as president of the national Foreign Trade council and was an assistant secretary of commerce. Im glad to say that i have known him for a long time. Weve both work for distinguished senators. Finally, we have nelson cottingham, im confused by the paper, his cofounder of a Prominent InternationalStrategic Advisory firm, prior to that he served in the white house a special advisor to president clinton on western Hemisphere Affairs and as general counsel. He is a very wide and wellestablished reputation in this field. Very glad to have him and the others with us today. Will have opening remarks from each. When that is complete will turn to the audience for questions. For being here. Thank you. By the way, can i remind you to punch a button, the green light will then come on. Thats essential. As john said this is being televised. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and to share the stage with the panel. My name is chad, senior fellow with the Peterson Institute. My life and researches on this topic of trade remedy. The first question is what are trade remedies . We think of them as being antidumping, and a Global Safeguard. Antidumping is the policy and import restricted policy that governments use to do without fair trade, lowpriced imports and duties are unfair traits that are subsidized imports subsidized by global governments. Then a Global Safeguard is nothing unfair but its a surgeon imports. These are policies the United States is used for decades. The policies that governments around the world use. Their special rules that allow governments to use these under trade agreements. In particular the wto and the gatt, but this is nothing new. What i have done for the last 15 or so years study these things. I belted public database that people can look into these things. What i thought i would do in my time is describe what we are seeing in the data on what we think it might mean for the United States, the Global Economy and in light of changes happening now under the Trump Administration. Even before the Trump Administration came into effect, countries used antidumping duties in the United States is no different. The worlds most wicked use of these type of policies. Over the past few years the United States has started to use these to restrict more imports than normal but nothing out of the ordinary. We have not used them all that much. With one exception. That is to deal with imports from china. The main target of the United States use of antidumping and countervailing duties since the wto in 2001 has basically been china. For the United States these trade remedy policies have been an anti china policy to do with imports coming in from china. Even though the export growth has been tremendous, and by estimates as the end of 2016, about 9 of u. S. Imports from china are being dealt with through these types of policies. These claims by the Trump Administration that no Previous Administration has done anything about imports from china is untrue. Getting back to the Bush Administration, these policies have been used to slow down imports from china. Now, there are current problems in the Global Economy that we can attribute some to china. We can talk about the overcapacity problem in steel, and alumina. But theyre just symptoms of deeper problems which are china is a different type of economy than the United States, western europe, market oriented communities. When they came in at 2001 there is an expectation that china might become more like us. But it has not happen automatically. So, we are at a critical juncture today, 15 or 16 years after the entry into the deputy of about what to do about the fact that it has not become a market economy. Are the rules adequate to deal with that . Those problems wouldve been there regardless of who won the 2016 election and whether or not we had these issues of steel or aluminum overcapacity. Other administrations have used these duties. When the Trump Administration came into office chose to do things differently. They are using antidumping duties but in their use of these policies they have escalated public rhetoric. Many probably havent heard of trade remedies because they fly under the radar. Not something that generate political attention. The Trump Administration has changed the indifferent instances. But recently it was about cases against canada and mexico on topics like lumber and sugar. The political escalation to the level of secretary commerce let alone the president is unprecedented. It raises the issue of foreign leaders having to get involved in these issues and becoming less technocratic. The second is they had pushed beyond using the more traditional trade roo remedies t are well known and understood and used by countries around the world, pushing into use of laws that we have not utilized. What i have in mind here is section 232 investigations. The national security, the threat that steel or aluminum imports are threat to the United States as national security. The investigation is ongoing under section 232 law. The last time was an investigation was in 2001. Spend a rarely used law. It provides tremendous discretion for the president to invoke sweeping sets of trade barriers if you were to choose. We can come back to the discussion about whether we think theres a security argument for stopping imports of steel were aluminum, im not of the view there is. The main reason i would argue for that is most of the steel and aluminum we import is not from our military adversaries. Because of policies like antidumping duties we have halted much of the steel and aluminum we might import from china from coming in. Most of the steel and aluminum we import comes from canada. Steel comes from mexico, germany, japan. These are not military adversaries, historically they have been allies of the United States and not a threat. Other initiatives of the Trump Administration in the realm of trade remedies in the section 232 cases is that the government self initiated the cases. Typically thats not time. Its rare. Typically these companies are labor unions that come forward and file the cases. But by trump bringing afforded themselves they have changed the playing field. They said to business, we are open for protection and trade barriers if you wanted to. In my mind, thats led to the next outcome, weve seen use or initiation of cases under the third trade law, the Global Safeguard law. Here we have two new cases, one on solar panel someone on washing machines. The last case we saw in 2001 on steel, much like today back then we had overcapacity problem in the Steel Industry. The george w. Bush and menstruation utilized section two oh one law to deal with that, the import search that was committed globally. But it was managed and done through normal channels. It didnt escalate out of control. Its different from what were seen today. The last one i want to make about trade remedies to set the table to highlight how important they are in the contemporary discussion, is what happened this week when the u. S. Trade representative released their negotiating objectives for nafta. The new nafta the trus trump negotiation is going to negotiate with canada and mexico. On page 14 of that, theres a subsection called trade remedy. The two main proposals, want to eliminate chapter 19 which is a special dispute settlement in which any of the nafta countries can challenge or investigate antidumping and restrictions that can impose on their exporters. This has served as a balance to make sure the abuse of those remedies doesnt happen. The second was to end the current provision which is to say when countries impose a Global Safeguard they generally end up exempting other nafta countries. Think back to the Bush Administration of 2000 wanted to, the steel safeguard import restriction it was a 30 tariff imposed on countries run the world with the exception of our Free Trade Agreement partners. The Trump Administration would like to remove these elements which in my mind are negative signal and it suggests one of their main interest are making it easier to reimpose trade barriers against canada and mexico. In particular and hurt trade in the north american region with that i will stop and hopefully that sets the stage for some of what were seeing. Thank you. Thats very good. Thank you. Im pleased to be here under the offices of my two favorite institutions, georgetown and the house of representatives. Very good years in both places. Im going to make three pedestrian points, think it will help us keep everything in context for the later conversation. The first point is that everybody is for rules based trade but we reserve the right to pick the rules i would like a note like. In the case of the remedy rules, there is a dividing line and its defined by how you answer the following question. Do trade remedies distort free trade are protected enable free trade . Better but has created sharp opinions. If you believe trade remedies distort free trade then the other side consists of lazy, incompetent throwback, unable to cut it in the Global Economy, unwilling to try and driving up costs for everybody else. If you believe remedies enable free trade than the other side consists of a naive ideologue that would vote to repeal the anti smuggling laws, take receiving stolen property out of the criminal code. Very few people have been known to cross that line. The 232s, if nothing else have certainly calm down the anti abcd e language. For the first time in 15 or 16 years ive heard something favorable set about the steel to zero one. A number of organizations that have weighed in against the 232 have spoken favorably of the loss. Just quoting one, this is from the group not known to be advocates, these laws have established requirements for assessing the appropriate scope and level of remedies. Thats progress in my opinion. The only people have changed their mind on the subject across that divide fall into three categories. One, people who change professional jobs. We had someone at the American Steel institute who went to the American Institute for international steel. The putting body offices higher the cabinet but we had no trouble refuting his arguments because we used his old papers against him. Industrial people who have had their products brought into play that goes downstream and upstream. There are a lot of steel users who form it into their products have always been opposed to steel dumping because it raises the price of their inputs. Now, theyre filing their own cases because china has lowered some of his targets into the downstream market. Similarly, we had a steel exec who had just joined a isi and who called up in anger because the alloy industry had filed the trade case and this was going to raise the price of inputs. We find that where you stand in the chain of the movement of that product from raw material into the consumers hands has a lot to do with how you see the trade us. Finally, there are elected politicians have been known to change their mind on the trade thus, usually and responsibly go forces in the constituency. If anyone today changes their mind from the other side to my side, i will buy you a real launch. The second point i want to make is the strict enforcement of trade has the disproportionate impact for trade liberalization. It is true the specifics of certain cases fly beneath the radar screen, but dont think that people dont have a sense of whether there being cheated out of their jobs and whether the government is doing anything about it. There has been talk since the election that the job losses due to downsizing of the economy are productivity gains or people dont realize how much they benefit from liberalized trade. All of that is true. It would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of the knowledge that there is unfair trade in the market and it has not been adequately addressed. A group called the alliance for American Manufacturing which ive been involved in, they conduct polling Public Attitudes will be fracturing. They been doing a long day for the last election. Every year, theres a super majority of americans entering that survey and saying yes they believe some trade is unfair, yes they believe the government ought to be doing something about it, yes, they will vote for a politician who feels that way about it and yes they will but against a politician who doesnt feel that way about it. So these polls have been shared with political campaigns every year. Especially in president ial years. This past year both major candidates finally read them and embrace them. There was a bidding war on trade enforcement that weve been trying to instigate for decades. The fact is, one of the candidates read and exploited it better than the other. Here we are. The third point is that besides popular support, there is pronounced political support. Here we are into an academic institution. Were arguing whether revenue laws are protectionist or not. So most an academic exercise and will be for the next two or three years. The