Multilateral cooperation is the single most powerful vehicle to achieve an inclusive and sustainable path to dealing with the enormity of the challenges facing society today. As our nation and the world face daunting crises of healthcare, unemployment and poverty, climate change and human rights, recognition of business as an essential partner in finding solutions in the international policy arena is critical to achieving success.
Recommendations to the Biden Administration: Mobilizing for Recovery, Prosperity, & Sustainability
Vision Statement
Multilateral Trade & an Effective WTO Are Vital to Sustainable Economic Recovery
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a cornerstone of the global rules-based trading system and has helped spread growth and development for decades. Beyond the WTO, market opening efforts, for example in the form of negotiations of agreements, are vital to ensure our economic connectivity to the global marketplace. The Administration should continue to push for WTO reform, reviving the appellate body, concluding ongoing negotiations, looking for new opportunities and resolving long-standing issues like those of developing country status.
Advancing Human Rights and Rule of Law, Leveraging Supply Chains
UN Sustainable Development Goal 16, “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions,” makes clear the key role that governance and the rule of law play in promoting peaceful, just and inclusive societies and in ensuring sustainable development. Despite the many government high-level pledges to promote human rights and decent work in line with International Labor Organization (ILO) standards, however, national-level implementation remains poor in far too many countries.
A New International Policy Strategy to Combat Illicit Trade
Illicit trade is a serious threat that harms U.S. economic and national security. It feeds a booming multi-trillion dollar global illegal economy and harms every market, puts public health and safety at risk, and upends the rule of law and damages investment climates. It is a threat multiplier that helps fuel transnational crime, kleptocracy, corruption and bribery, e-commerce frauds and greater insecurity and instability around the world. COVID-19 has further exacerbated criminality and IP infringement including through illicit trade that is putting the health and safety of citizens and communities at risk.
Redefine the U.S.-China Relationship Based on Constructive Dialogue & Tough-Minded, Focused Enforcement
U.S.-China economic relations are complex and multifaceted, and American business holds a direct and important stake in this relationship and in a predictable and fair trade and investment regime. As the world’s largest economy outside the U.S., China’s practices and policies have a significant impact on its trading partners, the U.S. economy, and on global trade. China’s continually growing presence in the global economy requires both countries to work together to address common challenges and responsibilities.
Promoting Vaccine Confidence, Health & Economic Recovery
COVID-19 vaccine confidence leading to vaccine uptake will directly contribute to individual, family, community and societal health and well-being, in turn keeping people working and the global economy functioning. The private sector can play a pivotal role in addressing vaccine hesitancy with its extensive reach and high level of trust imbued in employers by their employees. Business Partners to CONVINCE (COVID-19 New Vaccine INformation, Communication and Engagement), an initiative of The USCIB Foundation, seeks to engage employers in a unified vaccine confidence project that is global in scope to combat growing mistrust and misinformation on vaccines, and on COVID-19 in particular.
Digital Transformation is Key to Effective COVID Response & Building Back Better
The extent to which use of remote video-conferencing has become the norm for doing business and engaging in social interaction shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic puts in stark relief the importance of innovative technologies for economic and societal well-being. U.S. high technology companies – global leaders in this sector – have the potential to fuel resilience and recovery by creating new jobs and greater efficiencies across all sectors. This will mean greater employment for Americans and enhanced global business competitiveness as we recover from the pandemic.
Climate Change & Innovation: Advancing Economic Prosperity & Environmental Progress Together
As the U.S. re-joins and re-engages with the Paris Agreement, it will be expected to prepare a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), setting out its climate policy objectives and describing the means by which those objectives will be met. A key consideration in developing the U.S. NDC will be to catalyze U.S. private sector innovation and enhance its competitiveness by cooperating with allies inside and outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), not only domestically but also in the international arena, via trade, investment and public-private partnerships.
Addressing the Challenges of International Taxation for U.S. Business in the Global Marketplace
The immediate international tax policy priorities facing the Administration center around the current critical review phase for the OECD digital tax project which has been ongoing for several years. The absence of a global solution to revising an international tax system that has proven to be in some ways no longer fit for purpose in the digitalized economy has led to a proliferation of unilateral tax measures that disproportionately burden U.S. business. Many foreign jurisdictions and the European Union are committed to maintaining and increasing unilateral taxation solutions in the absence of global tax reform agreement.
Biodiversity & Nature-Based Solutions
The U.S. business community strongly supports environmental stewardship and sustainable use of natural resources as set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Biodiversity is essential to planetary and human health; every essential service of nature relies on biodiversity, whether on land or marine, such as clean air and water, food security, and genetic materials, which could offer cures and treatments for health challenges and many others.
