[Daily News| November 22, 2016 |Inside US Trade]
Industry and labor sources from the domestic steel and aluminum industries are urging President-elect Trump to take steps to speed up the process for moving cases — primarily against China — through the U.S. International Trade Commission and Department of Commerce, perhaps through the appointment of a chief trade prosecutor.
Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton called for creating such a prosecutor position but Trump has yet to weigh in on the idea.
“I sometimes wonder if [Trump] has overspoken on a lot of these [steel] issues, it may be a real learning curve for him. The timeline for the cases brought forth to the USITC is important and Clinton’s approach to using a trade prosecutor was a smart way to go about it,” Tom Conway, international vice president of the United Steelworkers, said in an interview with Inside U.S. Trade.
Conway said creating a chief trade prosecutor position dedicated to processing cases on a faster basis would be a significant improvement to the current process.
