RIAA Applauds Tai Confirmation
• On Wednesday, the Senate voted 98-0 to confirm Katherine Tai as the next U.S. Trade Representative. In response to this unanimous decision, Mitch Glazier, Chairman & CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), released the following statement: “The Recording Industry Association of America is thrilled by Katherine Tai’s confirmation today as U.S. Trade Representative, and applauds President Biden on making this outstanding choice. Ambassador Tai is a deeply knowledgeable trade expert whose extensive first-hand experience as Chief Trade Counsel with the Ways and Means Committee and as the Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement at USTR will put the Administration in an extremely strong position to advance a forward-looking trade agenda to improve the lives of all Americans, including the U.S. creative community.”
The statement continues, “Ambassador Tai’s focus on harnessing trade to expedite U.S. economic recovery and catalyze its benefits to promote employment and growth comes at a critical time. The recording industry is highly trade intensive and its contributions to our culture, economy and society are significant. Music exports amount to $9.1 billion in foreign sales each year, and the music industry contributes $170 billion to the U.S. GDP annually and supports 2.47 million American high-quality well-paying jobs. We could not agree more with her view that ‘innovation plays a key role in ensuring high-quality jobs and growth for the American economy, and robust protection of intellectual property rights is critical for ensuring our continued economic vitality.’ We also welcome her commitment to ‘support America’s copyright industries and the workers employed in such industries by ensuring that our trading partners open their markets to copyrighted exports produced by America’s innovators and enforce the IP laws necessary to protect such work from piracy.’ We look forward to working with Ambassador Tai and her team in their critical work on developing a trade policy that promotes a thriving American creative community and protects the copyright that is vital to our community’s contributions to U.S. jobs, wages and growth.” [Photo from Wikipedia]
