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Obama steps up battle to win fast-track trade deal authority
Obama steps up battle to win fast-track trade deal authority
Shawn Donnan, World Trade Editor 1/18/15
...Now, the traditionally pro-trade Republicans who control both houses of Congress after November’s midterm elections say they are eager to give it to him and hail it as a potential area of bipartisan co-operation. “The first thing we have to do is pass Trade Promotion Authority,” Paul Ryan, chair of the House ways and means committee, said last week.
Many Democrats, however, oppose granting Mr Obama that power and see it as antithetical to an increasingly bold domestic agenda.
They argue that globalisation and US trade policy have contributed to the offshoring of jobs, rising inequality and wage stagnation for American workers over the past 20 years. To them Mr Obama’s trade push — and the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, in particular — stand in opposition to his domestic pledges.
“I am sure that Wall Street wants this. The people that are funding the Republican party are big on this thing. But I don’t think there is any evidence in the long run that this is going to benefit the workers of this country,” says Jim McDermott, a longtime Democratic congressman from Washington state.
Part of the problem for the Obama administration is that some Democrats like Mr McDermott feel they were burnt by past votes for trade agreements like Nafta. “I’ve been told again and again by Democrats and Republicans that this [trade] thing we are doing is the best thing since sliced bread. But it hasn’t always worked out that way,” he says....
...Given Republican control of Congress and the likelihood that at least some Democrats will back it, granting the president fast-track authority ought to be a done deal. People close to the process predict a vote by the end of March.
Although they still expect a tough fight, Republicans and the administration are eager to build Democratic support.
The president has been personally lobbying labour leaders. Cabinet members have been given the task of convincing Democratic sceptics and aides are circulating a colour-coded target list of some 80 Democrats whose backing they want to secure.
The push is on and with good reason. After years of negotiations Mr Obama is, with the TPP, close to securing the biggest regional trade agreement a US president has landed since Nafta went into force in 1994.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d8a564aa-9d85-11e4-9b22-00144feabdc0.html
Shawn Donnan, World Trade Editor 1/18/15
...Now, the traditionally pro-trade Republicans who control both houses of Congress after November’s midterm elections say they are eager to give it to him and hail it as a potential area of bipartisan co-operation. “The first thing we have to do is pass Trade Promotion Authority,” Paul Ryan, chair of the House ways and means committee, said last week.
Many Democrats, however, oppose granting Mr Obama that power and see it as antithetical to an increasingly bold domestic agenda.
They argue that globalisation and US trade policy have contributed to the offshoring of jobs, rising inequality and wage stagnation for American workers over the past 20 years. To them Mr Obama’s trade push — and the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, in particular — stand in opposition to his domestic pledges.
“I am sure that Wall Street wants this. The people that are funding the Republican party are big on this thing. But I don’t think there is any evidence in the long run that this is going to benefit the workers of this country,” says Jim McDermott, a longtime Democratic congressman from Washington state.
Part of the problem for the Obama administration is that some Democrats like Mr McDermott feel they were burnt by past votes for trade agreements like Nafta. “I’ve been told again and again by Democrats and Republicans that this [trade] thing we are doing is the best thing since sliced bread. But it hasn’t always worked out that way,” he says....
...Given Republican control of Congress and the likelihood that at least some Democrats will back it, granting the president fast-track authority ought to be a done deal. People close to the process predict a vote by the end of March.
Although they still expect a tough fight, Republicans and the administration are eager to build Democratic support.
The president has been personally lobbying labour leaders. Cabinet members have been given the task of convincing Democratic sceptics and aides are circulating a colour-coded target list of some 80 Democrats whose backing they want to secure.
The push is on and with good reason. After years of negotiations Mr Obama is, with the TPP, close to securing the biggest regional trade agreement a US president has landed since Nafta went into force in 1994.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d8a564aa-9d85-11e4-9b22-00144feabdc0.html
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