March 29, 2024

House Revives Obama’s Trade Agenda With Passage Of Fast Track Bill

House revives Obama’s trade agenda with passage of fast track bill

The House voted to resurrect the centerpiece of President Obama’s trade agenda Thursday, six days after his fellow Democrats dealt him a dramatic setback after a months-long lobbying effort.

Thursday’s 218-to-208 vote to grant Obama “fast track” authority to negotiate trade deals — including the controversial 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership — is a win for the president, but it is not yet a victory.

It is the first in a complicated series of moves to get around a blockade set up by liberal House Democrats against the president’s trade agenda.

The original plan was complicated enough — four separate bills, two of them packaged in one piece for the Senate, but then split apart for House consideration into four votes. Since that initial path blew up last week, Obama’s supporters have crafted an exponentially more difficult bridge to revive and approve the trade legislation.

“This is a 60-yard field goal, into the wind. So, good luck, it may work,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a deep skeptic of the new process who nevertheless doesn’t see many other prospects. “You’re trying to create a cocktail here with a little margin for error, no margin for error. But, anyway, I’m willing to give it a whirl.”

Said House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) shortly before the vote, “I’m confident that we’re in a pretty good place.”

The prospects for success increasingly hinge on a commodity that has veered toward extinction in Washington these days: trust.

Republicans must trust Democrats, and Democrats must trust Democrats, and most of all they must put their faith in Obama to back up all the commitments made in the past week.

“Trust, trust is the key; you got it, trust,” Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.), the most ardent Democratic supporter of the trade agenda, said Wednesday before meeting with the president. “Trust rules the day. A lack thereof destroys it.”

By Wednesday evening, Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) felt confident enough to issue a statement that they were “committed to ensuring” the passage of every piece of the trade agenda.

If successful, Congress will approve over the next few days or weeks the fast track legislation, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, that sets specific time limits for the consideration of trade deals; funding for retraining workers who have lost their jobs because of global competition, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA; and a bill extending existing trade preference agreements.

Some House Democrats remain deeply opposed to the emerging effort to get around their opposition, believing expanded trade often leads to U.S. job losses and depressed wages because corporations search for cheaper labor overseas.

“Same result as the Titanic, I’d say,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), the No. 4 House Democratic leader, predicted of the new strategy, likening it to a “reshuffling” of the furniture on the ill-fated ship.

Becerra was one of more than 140 House Democrats who upended the original plan for advancing the trade agenda. After the Senate approved the legislation last month, Boehner set up a complex plan for approving Obama’s initiatives in the House so that Republicans could vote for pieces that they believed in and Democrats could support the parts they ideologically believed in.

One bill, reauthorizing the African Growth and Opportunity Act and other existing trade preference accords, won overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and Senate, the piece of the puzzle that seemed to have the clearest shot into law.

The new fast-track-only bill now moves on to the Senate, where it will likely win approval and head to the Oval Office for Obama’s signature.

Most House Republicans and a few dozen Democrats supported the TPA legislation, passing it last Friday in a 219-to-211 vote. . However, on the vote to reauthorize Trade Adjustment Assistance, the worker program, a vast majority of Democrats backed off previous support for that funding because they knew it would stall the entire trade agenda.

This happened despite Obama making a final plea to House Democrats last Friday morning before the key vote and asked them to at least support TAA since it is a program they support. “Play it straight,” he said, according to numerous Democrats.

Since that vote, 40 Democrats and Obama have spent the several days in constant phone calls and meetings with lawmakers to build a new plan to win approval for each piece, because most pro-trade Democrats demand in exchange for fast-track authority that there’s also money for worker retraining.

“We’re as clear as we can be: TAA and TPA both need to pass. We’ll see what happens and what the House does, and hopefully everybody will come to their senses,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a trusted negotiator among the competing factions.

To meet Murray’s demand, McConnell would take the popular African trade bill — which has been slightly altered by the House and needs Senate consideration — and amend it to include the worker training funds. A large bipartisan Senate coalition supports TAA.

And then it would head to the House, where the trust issue hits its most critical level. Among the 14 Senate Democrats who will vote for fast-track, there is deep doubt that House Democrats will come around to voting for legislation that they support.

Fewer than 100 Republicans are willing to vote for TAA funding, so Obama and Boehner would need about 80 Democrats to switch from no to yes to honor the pledges made to Murray and the other Senate Democrats.

“I don’t think there’s any bankable guarantees in this building right now,” said Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a supporter of Obama’s trade agenda who has also been the Senate’s main supporter of the African trade bill, AGOA. “My hope is that AGOA is not collateral damage in what is a pretty fundamental fight over trade policy.”

Some pro-trade Democrats believe Obama may have to actually sign the fast-track authority bill for liberal Democrats to face a take-it-or-leave-it offer to get both the African trade promotion and TAA bills.

“It is going to be hard to see votes switch. At some point there is going have to be some de-linkage there and the Democrats need to come home and protect the program that we’ve fought for for years,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a leader of pro-trade New Democratic Coalition.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a supporter of every piece of Obama’s trade agenda, said her daily exercise includes being “ever the optimist” that Congress will move past the ideological divides to get things done despite the intense efforts in some corners.

“I want to believe every day there’s some little building block,” Murkowski said. “That’s what we’re working on — trust, that five-letter word.”

Share
Source: