[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 164 (Wednesday, September 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S6608]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Jayme Ray White

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, next, the Senate is considering the 
nomination of Jayme White for the position of Deputy U.S. Trade 
Representative.
  Now, Senators know that Jayme has been a longtime member of my 
Finance Committee staff. So I won't bury that lede today. We feel, all 
of us who have had a chance to work with him in the Finance Committee--
and he has been supported by business and labor and Senators who worked 
together with him repeatedly over the years on complicated trade 
issues. We all come together to make the case that Jayme will be an 
exemplary Deputy USTR representative.
  He is a topnotch advocate for our workers, our businesses, our 
farmers, and our ranchers. His confirmation will be a loss for the 
Senate Finance Committee--I can tell you that--but it is going to be 
the American people's gain.
  For a little bit on Jayme's background, he is from our part of the 
world, the Pacific Northwest. He is a son of union workers near 
Seattle. He has worked on trade policy for more than 20 years on 
Capitol Hill. We kind of lured him away from his old job, working for 
his hometown representative, Congressman Jim McDermott. And since 2014, 
he has been the top trade and competitiveness adviser for the Finance 
Committee Democrats.
  I have had a front-row seat watching Jayme for over a decade, and 
what he has always tried to do is reach across the aisle and say: Look, 
we know that to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs in the private 
sector--and in our part of the world that is crucial. One out of four 
jobs depends on trade, and trade jobs pay better, often, than the 
nontrade jobs. You have to think about workers and the environment and 
good governance. And Jayme brings Members together from both sides of 
the aisle to make sure our trade policies in those areas are durable 
for the long term.
  He has been way ahead of the pack on the need for more aggressive 
trade enforcement. Years ago, when I was chairman of the Finance Trade 
Subcommittee--our colleague Max Baucus was chairman of the full 
committee--Jayme set up a sting operation, an actual sting operation, 
with a dummy website to show how the trade cheats, the rip-off artists, 
were able to launder merchandise and avoid paying customs duties. They 
would ship goods through other countries, slap a new label on something 
with different information on their products, and managed to slip them 
into the American market. That experience helped us write and build 
momentum for trade enforcement, came to be known as the ENFORCE Act, 
passed a few years later.
  When the Trump administration's new NAFTA was weak on enforcement, 
Jayme and Ambassador Tai worked to make huge improvements. And we all 
worked together in our committee. There were many of us. And, 
certainly, our colleague Senator Brown of Ohio, who has championed this 
for so many years, this effort, this bipartisan effort to strengthen 
enforcement, made sure that USMCA raised the bar over any other trade 
agreement in history in terms of enforceable commitments on labor 
rights and the environment. He has been a champion of transparency and 
accountability.
  And I can tell you, when I came into public life, people hardly knew 
anything about trade agreements that were getting ready to be voted on. 
I mean, you would go home for a meeting and people would ask you about 
some trade proposal, and you would be kind of in the dark. Jayme wanted 
to make sure that the days when well-connected reporters and insiders 
in the industry knew more than Members of Congress and the public about 
what was being negotiated--Jayme said: We are going to change that. And 
we did. There are now concrete rules giving Members access to 
negotiating text while the negotiations happen. Final text-to-trade 
agreements have to be public for anybody to see for a minimum of 60 
days before the Congress can consider approving it. Those commitments 
to transparency, new accountability, which we had nothing like when I 
came into public life, come about because of Jayme's hard work.
  So I will sum it all up. I know we are waiting for our vote. What I 
have come to say--and we have all listened to the debates about free 
trade and fair trade and the like--Jayme understands that our 
challenge, for all of us, for our workers and our small businesses and 
to protect the rights of all concerned, we have got to have trade done 
right--trade done right: rigorously enforce the trade laws on the 
books, make sure that there is more transparency and accountability, 
and, particularly, make sure that foreign markets--foreign markets--are 
open to American products and American workers.
  I will just tell you, I am sorry to lose him after 12 years on my 
staff. I always knew that he would be going off to big things. I wasn't 
sure it was going to be this soon.
  Twenty-five members of the Finance Committee agreed with me when they 
voted to send his nomination to the floor. He has got 110 percent of my 
support. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on the White nomination.
  My understanding is we will vote first on the Batchelder nomination 
that I spoke about earlier and that a bit later in the evening, we will 
vote on Mr. White. I strongly urge colleagues to vote for both.