Excerpt: Corporate America stepped into the political battle over the US debt limit, pleading for congressional leaders to raise the country’s borrowing authority in a “timely fashion” to avoid damaging the economy. On Wednesday, a group of the largest business trade associations and lobby groups sent a letter to Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill saying it was critically important for the US to stand by its financial promises and preserve its creditworthiness…In the letter, the business groups – which also included the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council, and the Organisation for International Investment – said they were not seeking to diminish the need to restore the country’s public finances. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/93553596-7c33-11e0-a386-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1M9uaSNXF

Under increasingly unified pressure from the U.S. private sector, the Obama administration is attempting to craft a proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations that would place binding international disciplines on the activities of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other government-influenced entities to ensure they do not gain an unfair advantage over private firms at home and abroad… Worried that bureaucratic infighting and the complexity of the issues involved could prevent the administration from achieving a unified U.S. position in advance of the Vietnam round, six U.S. trade associations on April 15 pressed Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs and Development Michael Froman to forge ahead. Froman has been coordinating the inter-agency process, they said… Signing the letter were the Coalition of Service Industries, the Emergency Committee for American Trade, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Council for International Business, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

U.S. business groups are pressing President Barack Obama to use trade negotiations with nations ringing the Pacific to tighten regulations on state-owned companies that serve as government-subsidized competitors… “We need to find how we make the playing field level,” said Alan Wolff, a lawyer at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP in Washington. U.S. trade officials are “quite concerned because the business community is quite concerned about the role of state-owned enterprises.”… Wolff will speak on state-owned businesses today at a forum on the issue in Washington hosted by the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents companies such as Boeing of Chicago, the world’s largest aerospace company, and JPMorgan of New York, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets after Bank of America Corp.

Excerpt: The White House is considering new sanctions against Syria amid a crackdown by that country’s government against pro-democracy demonstrators… The administration imposed a similar strategy with Libya, said Richard Sawaya, director of USA Engage, which promotes alternatives to unilateral U.S. sanctions. He also noted that Iran sanctions legislation approved by Congress in 2010 targeted individuals in Iran… Few if any U.S. companies are still doing business with Syria, which could put a limit on the effect of any U.S. sanctions, said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council. “For the most part, companies doing business there pretty much unilaterally decided to get out,” he said. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/157645-obama-mulls-more-sanctions-for-much-sanctioned-syria

The recent announcement that Colombia and the United States have a provisional agreement on issues that have long delayed completion of their free-trade agreement breaks the logjam that has held up a congressional vote on the South Korea, Colombia, and Panama trade deals. These accords, inherited from the Bush administration, could soon be off the administration’s agenda. Now, the White House’s focus can shift to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which could prove to be President Obama’s defining trade legacy… The partnership involves nine countries: the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. “This is one of the most dynamic parts of the world,” said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council. “The real attractiveness is its potential for growth.”