TPP Trade Deal Backers Hit Big hurdles: Donald, Hillary and Bernie

[KoKo]

Presidential politics complicate Barack Obama's push to ratify one of the biggest trade deals in history.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are railing against the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Democratic primary. On the right, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is ripping the trade deal as a “disaster” negotiated by “incompetent people.”

President Barack Obama’s herculean task of shepherding the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership through Capitol Hill is about to run into one major hurdle: 2016 presidential politics.

The Obama administration already won one hard-fought battle when trade promotion authority passed in June over opposition from most Democrats. But the booming anti-trade rhetoric animating the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries could complicate the path for Congress to formally approve the trade agreement between the United States and 11 Asia-Pacific nations, officially made public last week.

Obama has little room for error. Pro-trade backers won the June fight by the narrowest of margins in both the House and Senate. The trade pact is the biggest item on Obama’s economic agenda during his last two years in office.

“We only got 13 Democrats in the Senate on TPA,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “There is a concern that with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side so fervently anti-trade, that I’m not sure whether those Democrat votes will be there.”

MORE AT:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/senate-trade-trans-pacific-partnership-obama-215610

============

[pampango]

1. "conservative opponents of Obama’s trade agenda are seizing on Trump’s rise in the Republican ..."

On the other end, conservative opponents of Obama’s trade agenda are seizing on Trump’s rise in the Republican presidential primary to blunt momentum for the TPP. The issue has driven a rift through the GOP field: Trump and Ted Cruz are skeptics, while Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have been warm to it. “I think Trump’s strength in the Republican primary is in significant part due to his challenging of trade and the fact that he says we haven’t defended American interests effectively,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose conservative views on trade and immigration align with those of the billionaire mogul.

Still, anti-TPP Democrats have a major weapon in their arsenal in Clinton. The likely Democratic standard-bearer came out in opposition to the TPP in October, after calling it the “gold standard” of trade agreements as Obama’s secretary of state in 2012.

“Secretary Clinton’s leadership on this issue is a substantial boost to those of us who oppose the TPP,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). “Secretary Clinton’s important statement highlighted an issue that many of us who have serious concerns about the TPP have been focused on — the issue of currency manipulation.”

Cornyn said the administration’s decision not to lift the ban on crude oil exports in conjunction with the trade agreement “certainly dims my enthusiasm.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he’s “absolutely against” TPP as written because of intellectual property provisions for biologics — a new class of drugs made from living cells — and pharmaceuticals, as well as the omission of tobacco from the TPP’s investor protections. Fellow North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr has similar concerns. All three Senate Republicans backed trade promotion authority in June.