ITC Nominees Pledge Independence, Following the Facts
Interest groups' complaints about the two recent International Trade Commission nominees were barely touched on during a hearing at the Senate Finance Committee.
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Jim Coughlin, a former Democratic Senate staffer, senior counsel at the Export-Import bank, and a former ITC staff attorney, has been nominated, as has Halie Craig, a Republican Senate staffer who worked for free-trade advocate former Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.
Some groups have criticized Coughlin as an advocate for companies that have been accused of violating intellectual property of U.S. firms; many have criticized Craig as a free-trade ideologue who will have a thumb on the scale against domestic antidumping and countervailing duty petitioners.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, who will lead the committee next year, asked the pair, "How will you ensure that you will apply the trade laws objectively? How will you know you are calling the balls and strikes, rather than changing the strike zone?"
He also asked them to talk about the statutory factors in the public interest assessment in Section 337 cases, those IP cases in front of the ITC. There is no public interest consideration for AD/CVD or safeguard investigations, only the protection of domestic producers, if the foreign producers have been unfairly subsidized or if they are selling at an artificially low price.
Craig said that while generally, the ITC commissioners are three people who were chosen by Democrats and three who were chosen by Republicans, "It’s the job of every single commissioner to be independent and fact-based. The commission is also known for having a number of unanimous decisions," she said, which speaks to its impartiality and its dedication to following the law.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore, criticized President-elect Donald Trump in his opening statement, saying the tariffs he intends to impose will make life more costly for American families who have suffered with high inflation in recent years.
He asked Coughlin if the ITC would undertake a safeguard investigation without being subject to political influence.
Coughlin said that it would be inappropriate for him to opine about any particular tariff proposal, and added that when he was a staff attorney at the commission, "my experience there was that everyone acted in a nonpartisan, collegial manner and people always focused on building the factual record and making their decision on the facts in that record and not going beyond that."
Crapo, when it was his turn to question, said that the fact that Coughlin refrained from criticizing possible Trump tariffs that are coming went a long way toward reassuring him that Coughlin would be an objective commissioner on the ITC.
"I think before we start attacking something, we ought to find out what it is," Crapo said. "We all agree that tariffs are appropriate tools, if used in the right way, and we all agree that there is a wrong use of tariffs, and we will get into that over the next three or four years."
New committee member Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., asked the pair how to balance the tension between making sure there are strong intellectual property protections, to provide an incentive for innovation, but also making sure that the Section 337 process isn't being used to enforce IP rights "that aren’t actually valid because it just drives up prices for consumers."
Craig said, "It’s really critical that Americans can trust in their institutions. [This] is an agency since 1916 with a stellar reputation for being nonpartisan and objective. If you are a litigant before the ITC, you are spending a lot of time and money to be there. It is really important to feel you are getting a fair shake."
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who lost his bid for re-election, amplified the complaints of unions and other groups who have said that Craig's and Coughlin's nominations are being rushed through before the change in administrations, and he said it's critical to understand the nominees' philosophies, and how they relate to the ITC’s role in enforcing antidumping duty and countervailing duty laws.
He referred to a tin mill plant in Weirton, West Virginia, that employed many Ohioans. The ITC ruled unanimously that imports of tin mill were not injuring the domestic industry, and so declined to impose trade remedies (see 2402060063).
"The city I grew up in -- I've seen what bad trade policy has done," Brown said. Brown is from Mansfield, Ohio, which once was a small city full of manufacturers. "Convince me and my colleagues and the workers in our states ... that you'll strictly enforce antidumping and countervailing duties" laws, he told the pair.
Craig replied that she comes from a working-class family, and is the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of union workers. In her opening statement, which Brown was not in the room for, she said her father, a house painter, was out of work for two years during the Great Recession.
Coughlin said that the reason he is interested in "coming back to the commission is to protect jobs and industries," and called that his "North Star."
Wyden said that members of the committee "have plenty to consider" when deciding if they'll support the nominees, and he said to Brown, "I share so many of these concerns."