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Obama Picks Ron Kirk as Trade Representative
By Michael Cebon | December 23, 2008
The incoming Obama administration has annouced that Ron Kirk will be the new US Trade Representative. (We previously linked to reports that Xavier Becerra would be the new USTR, but apparently he said no.)
Kirk is a former mayor of Dallas, Texas, who doesn’t seem to have much of a background on trade issues.
But there is cause for some cautious optimism, with APF reporting that
The Democrat is strongly backed by trade unions and opposes free trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea that were signed under President George W Bush’s administration
In announcing Kirk, Obama also said some excitingly progressive things about his future trade policy, including that FTAs “must be written not just with the interest of big corporations in mind, but with the interests of our whole nation and our workers at heart.” He also said that Kirk has “seen the promise of trade, but also its pitfalls, and he knows there is nothing inconsistent about standing up for free trade and standing up for American workers.”
On the flip side Kirk has spent the last 5 years working as a corporate lobbyist for Energy Future Holdings Corporation, a group created by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs to acquire power utility TXU.
There’s some more background on Kirk here.
Topics: US Trade Policy | Comments Off
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