Biden picks Evercore’s Bianchi, Senate aide for trade roles

President Joe Biden will nominate Evercore ISI policy analyst Sarah Bianchi and senior Senate aide Jayme White as deputies in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the White House said Friday.

Bianchi, who served as an aide to Biden while he was Barack Obama’s vice president, is a senior managing director and head of U.S. public policy research at Evercore ISI. She previously worked for BlackRock Inc. and Airbnb Inc.

White, the chief trade adviser to Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, has worked on trade issues for two decades, starting in the House Ways and Means Committee, and has served in the Senate since 2009. He took on the chief trade adviser role for the Finance panel, now led by Oregon’s Wyden, in 2014.

Bianchi will oversee the agency’s China portfolio while White is set to handle Europe and Western Hemisphere issues, including the implementation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, according to people familiar with the nominations who asked for anonymity because the details aren’t public yet.

“Sarah Bianchi and Jayme White have the expertise USTR needs at a critical moment for the country, and the world,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. “I look forward to drawing on their collective judgement and vast experience.”

The pair will require Senate confirmation. Wyden, whose committee is responsible for processing the nominees, said in a statement that the administration has put forward “two top-notch deputies” and that he wants to see the nominations move forward as soon as possible.

While Bianchi doesn’t have extensive trade experience, she’s an insider in Biden’s world. She ran the economic and domestic policy team while Biden was vice president, and has also served as chair of the policy advisory board of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.

White is a close ally of Tai. During the Trump administration, the pair worked together on Capitol Hill to secure Democratic priorities on labor and environment provisions in the renegotiation of Nafta—resulting in the most bipartisan trade vote in decades.

If confirmed, Bianchi and White will be at the center of a number of trade fights the Biden team inherited from the previous administration. They’ll need to decide whether to scrap or build on a partial trade deal negotiated with China, and how to resolve a decades-old dispute with Europe on aircraft subsidies.

USTR usually has three deputies, including one who serves as ambassador to the World Trade Organization. The White House hasn’t put forward a name for that post.