Giving President Obama authority to negotiate trade deals and getting international agreements is the top priority for businesses, according to a group representing the biggest businesses in the country.
“We see trade as one of those areas that is ripe for bipartisan cooperation,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T.
Stephenson was speaking about the release of a survey conducted by the Business Roundtable of its member CEOs. Four out of five respondents said increasing access to foreign markets would help their companies grow, a result that Stephenson said “clearly indicates that increased international trade would result in more U.S. hiring.”
Trade Promotion Authority legislation, granting the president the power to negotiate trade deals within certain parameters and then having those deals come to Congress for an up-or-down vote, would be an “important step” in opening foreign markets, Stephenson said.
“We need to pass it as soon as possible,” he said, adding that the Business Roundtable was focusing on working with members of Congress on a bill to do that.
Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over trade, said in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal published Sunday that trade promotion authority would be passed in the spring and that the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal would be closed by fall.
Ryan is set to address the roundtable Wednesday on tax reform, the second priority of businesses identified by Stephenson.
“There is probably nothing that will move this economy forward and drive capital investment faster than tax reform,” Stephenson said, mentioning that the group was pushing Congress business tax reform. “And if we could get business tax reform done, get our rates at competitive levels, it will free up a wave of capital investment that we have not seen in some time,” Stephenson added.
The 120 CEOs surveyed by the roundtable in January and February are increasingly optimistic about investment, sales, growth and hiring. Together they projected the gross domestic product clocking in at 2.8 percent for 2015, up slightly from the last quarter’s projections. That guess is in line with the Federal Reserve’s projections but slightly below the White House’s.
The group said Friday that trade, tax reform, infrastructure spending, and regulatory reform would increase the speed of growth.
Stephenson added immigration reform to the mix as an agenda item that could translate into higher wages.
“We’ve been experiencing significant pressure” in terms of wages in the high-tech sector, Stephenson said. “This is one of the reasons we continue to push so aggressively for immigration reform. We have a lack of talent in this particular area.”
