Thread by @toddntucker

Further evidence that the constituency for trade policy is changing.

https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1390021004626436100

And USTR is changing.

Their first statement under Biden was on racial equity.

https://twitter.com/toddntucker/status/1356696121716965381

Their first annual trade policy report explicitly laid out their metric of success is not low prices, but high wages.

https://twitter.com/toddntucker/status/1366466257315332097

Personnel is policy: makes a big difference to have folks like @AmbassadorTai @Brad_Setser @AmPhoenixTrade and many more running trade. Here's a piece from latter on when we tried to take New Deal global and how that provides a template for where we go now
washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/april…

And here's the official statement. Thank you Ambassador Katherine Tai!

https://twitter.com/AmbassadorTai/status/1390021205974003720

"The U.S. isn’t the only country that until now has withheld support for the waiver. The EU, U.K., Japan, Switzerland, Brazil and Norway also have resisted the push. However, supporters of the waiver argue that U.S. leadership on the issue could help sway other holdouts."

Source:

https://twitter.com/jendeben/status/1390024973465575426

Humanity owes India, South Africa, and 100 other countries - as well as all the US legislators and grassroots activists - a debt of gratitude for pushing US to retain said humanity.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Here's more detail on the growing People Before Profits caucus in Congress.

https://twitter.com/deborah_james/status/1389978886822322185

Though as noted here, such a caucus name (made up by me) would not even be accurate as the companies are gonna profit just fine

https://twitter.com/lindsey_brink/status/1389976811870765062

That's what the @JosephEStiglitz @WallachLori piece gets at well. This is not about a perfect sequencing of the correct technical solutions - it's about power. Change the power dynamics and there's a lotta technical pathways to the right place.

https://twitter.com/snlester/status/1390029386632548353

Might the long 1990s be finally over?

https://twitter.com/zeithistoriker/status/1390032977632055300

That too!

https://twitter.com/jallepap/status/1390035216471924738

When the WHO and the WTO agendas come into conflict, it's not usual that the former prevails. A welcome change in dynamic.

https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1390037666213900290?s=19

There should be no request from the US to get anything from developing countries for the immediate COVID vaccine flexibilities.

However, going forward, if the US shows willingness to expand those flexibilities, it will create something we haven't had since the 1990s: stuff to bargain over. Give on IPR, get on green industrial policy subsidies - times a variable geometry of dozens of issues.

Or as Kim Stanley Robinson has written, “Overcome difficulties by multiplying them.”
toddntucker.medium.com/ministry-for-y…