You can be a beneficiary of trade policy or a victim of it, says Donald Sovie, a global partner at the Irvine office of Washington, D.C., law firm Crowell & Moring LLP.
Companies,not just heavyweights such as Boeing Co. and Fluor Corp.,can get a trade restriction lifted or raise issues about tariffs at global trade talks, according to Sovie.
“You can drive the law to where you need it to be,” he said.
Sovie opened Crowell & Moring’s Irvine office some 15 years ago. Before that, he was an associate counsel for Ford Motor Co., responsible for commercial and government contracts.
Sovie recently talked with the Business Journal’s Chris Cziborr about ways companies can lobby the government on trade issues.
How can companies bring changes to trade policy?
All the time we see foreign policy trumping regulatory policy. That can result in changes that can benefit business.
What many,particularly small and midsize businesses don’t understand,is that it’s not that hard to influence policy. You have to get involved in the creation of policy. Sometimes that means you have to communicate with the people in the foreign policy area. You have to tell them what current policy is doing to you, how it’s inhibiting your ability to sell product or how the policies of other governments are limiting your ability to sell or produce offshore.
Every three years or so, we have a round of international trade negotiations. They are for the entire World Trade Organization comprised of 150 nations. They get together to negotiate what policy should be in certain areas like tariffs and trade restrictions. They talk about standards that should apply,especially standards associated with areas like intellectual property.
We’ve got another round called the Doha round coming up this spring and summer. Now’s the time to make known your interest in having a restriction lifted. Or you can raise an issue of tariffs or dubious quarantining of products that’s affecting your ability in some area of the world that you sell to.
Why not just leave it up to business lobbying groups?
Company officials often assume that the trade associations they’re affiliated with will handle such matters. But it’s my experience that trade associations by and large represent the largest interests in whatever trade they’re involved in. So the large companies tend to dominate the policy objectives.
So it is the small and midsize companies where there might be advantages that could be sought or disadvantages that could be eliminated. Their issues never make it to the agenda of these trade associations.
You don’t have to be a big company to get involved directly?
You don’t. You can influence policy setting by having your voice communicated by trade representatives, by people involved in the trade business. Our law firm is associated with C & M; International Inc., which is a trade policy group. It’s their business to influence trade policy.
Where’s the best starting point to influence trade policy?
The best place to influence U.S. trade policy is to communicate with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. That office is part of the office of the president. You can do that directly,write a letter or send an e-mail.
You also can do that indirectly by working with people whose business it is to communicate with that office on your behalf. You could have a single person representing your interests communicating to that office on your behalf with a style and support that would be influential to the trade representative office.
What’s an example of a company influencing trade policy?
We helped San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. some years ago get the government to lower textile import duties. The company has saved some $30 million in duties to date as a result.
Another example is when the Chinese government granted a license to U.S. subsidiaries to operate in China in the financial services business. It took people in the U.S. that were familiar with how to influence international trade. They also needed people that know how to work with people inside the foreign locations to accomplish things in an appropriate way.
