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contains the Sections 201 and 301 tariff delegations. TPA, then called fast-track, has aided several trade agreements, including NAFTA and the USMCA, which took effect in 2020. TPA has lapsed before during slow periods in trade policy, most recently in July 2021, and remains lapsed today.

The President should work with Congress to renew TPA to rationalize negotiations for upcoming trade agreements with the United Kingdom, the European Union, and others.

Both supporters and critics have questions regarding TPA’s implications for the constitutional separation of powers, and policymakers should take those questions seriously. As things currently stand, Congress has some oversight powers over the President’s negotiations under TPA, but they are limited. Congress can increase its oversight by passing new legislation superseding relevant provisions of the 1974 Trade Act. However, that is a double-edged sword. A Congress that largely favors free trade could exercise oversight to keep the President on the straight and narrow in trade negotiations. A progressive Congress would instead insist that the President negotiate for as many trade-unrelated provisions as possible to benefit labor and green constituencies while pushing progressive policies on the U.S. and its trading partners.

On balance, a single voice at the negotiating table that is subject to congressional oversight is the best posture for American workers and consumers. A fractious Congress has yet to demonstrate the capacity to negotiate with other nations, but it can help to hold the Administration accountable.

Trade Agreements with the United Kingdom, European Union, and Others. Even with a renewed TPA, trade agreement negotiations will likely take years. The Trump and Biden Administrations were not inclined to start the process, so that job may well fall to the next Administration. In that sense, the delays may end up being worth it.

If there is one lodestar to follow, it is to restrict these agreements to trade issues only. Ever since NAFTA, trade-unrelated provisions have taken on a greater role in trade agreements. These create sticking points and are routinely hijacked by rent-seeking special interests and progressive ideologues who demand subsidies, carve-outs, and economically distorting labor and environmental standards that have nothing to do with trade. If governments are to negotiate these issues, they should do so in separate agreements so they do not torpedo efforts to liberalize and engage with allies. Trade agreements should lighten burdens, not create new ones by attempting to address non-trade issues.

Policy leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom, including experts from The Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, have prepared a model trade agreement along these lines.”* Along with TPA renewal, this would greatly reduce negotiating costs. This template is also readily adaptable for agreements with Europe and any other allies that are willing to

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liberalize their economies and build a stronger alliance with America. The draft U.S.-U.K. agreement includes an accession chapter to allow others to join on the same terms.

Restoring or Replacing the WTO Dispute Resolution Process. The World Trade Organization as we know it may be mortally wounded. This deprives the U.S. of the WTO’s dispute resolution process, under which the U.S. it won 85 percent of the cases it brought. The WTO’s slow death began under the Obama Administration, which refused to allow appointees to the WTO’s appellate board, which as a consequence is now nonfunctional. Both the Trump and Biden Administrations have continued the Obama Administration’s approach.

That means that every case in the dispute resolution process will sputter to a halt as parties file appeals that cannot be heard. If the WTO is no longer fit for that purpose, it may be better to look in a different direction. More than 20 years ago, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow proposed that America and other free economies should form a Global Free Trade Alliance that is open to all countries that adhere to a truly free market system with appropriate safeguards such as property rights, lack of corruption, and enforcement of contracts.” Alongside a general agreement on low to zero tariffs, the alliance would move to reduce the effect of nontariff barriers (such as the previously noted baby formula ingredient and labeling barriers) by basing trade around the principle of mutual recognition. Such an alliance could be started by a trade agreement between the United States and, for example, the United Kingdom with an accession chapter allowing others to join if they meet the criteria.

It would be essential for a Global Free Trade Alliance to avoid the WTO’s most serious problem: the exemptions from its rules that are granted to developing countries. When China joined the WTO in 2001, it was granted developing-nation status, which it continues to use to dodge rules that should apply to it. Other countries have used that status to delay needed reforms. Rule exemptions give some countries a perverse incentive to remain poor and autocratic.

A Global Free Trade Alliance would allow the U.S. to enjoy the benefits of a rulesbased international trading system without the WTO’s shortcomings. Negotiation costs would be lower because the countries would already be allied on many issues. In addition, there would be no separate tiers with different rules, and this would give developing countries an incentive to liberalize. In addition to being good for its own sake, liberalization would give them entry into a prestigious club that tilted toward America’s orbit and away from China’s.

Closing the Export-Import Bank. The Export-Import Bank (EXIM) is an unusually clear example of how vulnerable trade protectionism is to being hijacked by special interests.” In most years, about half of EXIM’s business benefits a single company, Boeing. Their relationship is so cozy that EXIM’s nickname around Washington is “the Bank of Boeing.”