1. What is fast-track trade authority?
Fast track allows a treaty to be ratified with a simple majority vote in both houses rather than the
constitutionally-required two-thirds majority in the Senate. It also requires that a treaty be
brought up in a short time period after submission by the President and prevents Congress from
amending it. Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative Paul Ryan have introduced fast-track
legislation in their respective houses and have passed the legislation through their committees.
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2. Does Congress direct President Obamaâs trade negotiations through fast track?
No! President Obama is NOT required to follow any of the policy suggestions included in fasttrack
legislation. They are advisory only. The 150 or so âprotectionsâ negotiated into the Hatch/
Ryan fast-track bill can, and likely will, be ignored by the President. As an example, a majority of
the House and Senate signed letters in 2013 urging inclusion of tough currency manipulation
language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In March of 2015, the U.S. Trade
Representative told the Senate Finance Committee that he wasnât including language stopping
currency manipulation in the deal, ignoring their demand. That same Committee just passed
fast-track legislation rewarding the Administration that ignored their one major request on the
pending TPP.
3. Does fast track require transparency for the TPP?
The language in the fast track legislation requires that the President make the final TPP public
for at least 60 days before he signs it. This sounds good until you realize that the President
doesnât have to follow this procedure, and given previous disputes with the Executive Branch,
President Obama will do whatever he wants, and Congress will let him, so the provision is
meaningless.
4. What happens if the President ignores Congressâ suggestions?
Congress could repeal fast-track legislation but the Senate would need to reach a 60-vote
(three-fifths) threshold to do it; and Speaker Boehner would have to reverse course to allow a
House nullification vote; both are extremely unlikely occurrences.
5. Can Congress defeat a treaty presented under fast track?
Yes, they can, BUT it will be much more difficult. In making a pitch for fast track, Speaker
Boehner argued that fast track is needed so we can keep a leg up on China. Since the fast-track
vote merely establishes rules for considering treaties, not the actual substance of any treaty, in
making this argument, Speaker Boehner has clearly tied a vote for fast track as being a vote for
the almost-completed TPP between eleven Pacific Rim nations including Australia, Japan,
Mexico and Canada. There is no separating these two things; so a vote for fast track is a vote
for Obamaâs incomplete TPP trusting that the Treaty will be good for America.
6. Donât we need this kind of trade deal to compete?
No, the United States already exports $861 billion worth of goods and services annually to the
countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With or without the TPP, we have a robust
trading relationship with these Pacific Rim nations.
7. Why do only five out of the twenty seven sections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with
trade?
The TPP is only marginally a trade deal. It is fundamentally a regulatory deal designed to
change the laws and regulatory frameworks of the participating nations on issues ranging from
global warming to immigration to intellectual property and financial services. This is why
President Obama calls the TPP âthe most progressive trade agreement in our history.â
8. Is immigration in the TPP?
Yes, and while proponents of fast track try to minimize this concern, there is no reason for
President Obama to include immigration in this treaty (with Mexico as a partner) if this is a
benign section. Due to secrecy requirements surrounding a yet-to-be-formalized treaty, it is
impossible to know what the exact language states and its implications. However, if President
Obama wants to alleviate concerns over the immigration section, he could simply eliminate it
from the TPP as Congress demanded in previous rounds of negotiating. The inclusion of a
section on immigration is enough to vote no on fast track to ensure that the TPP be held up to
the highest level of scrutiny, and subjected to the two-thirds majority vote requirement.
9. Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership a âfree trade dealâ?
No, at best, it is a managed/regulatory trade deal. Over the past five years, various Washington,
D.C. interest groups have been working with President Obama to put together the TPP, while
Congress has largely been on the sidelines. The TPP represents the ultimate in corporate
cronyism run amok with President Obama picking the winners and losers, and, if the House
Speaker and Senate Majority Leader have their way, Congress rubber stamping those choices.
If Congress had passed fast track legislation five years ago and directed the President on how
to proceed at the beginning of the negotiating process, it would be one thing; but passing fast
track to facilitate ratification of a treaty that is 99 percent complete negates the constitutional
advisory role that Congress used to jealously guard.
10. How does the TPP affect China?
Leaks of information about the TPP indicate that it has something known as a docking
agreement. While the specifics of how this would work are not known, a docking agreement
allows other countries to join into the treaty, meaning that China could very well join the TPP.
This docking feature would virtually eliminate any opportunity for America to engage in bilateral
negotiations with the Chinese to resolve some of the stickiest issues between our nations.
Rather than contain China, as the Obama Administration claims they want to do, TPP could, in
fact, provide the Chinese with the key to knocking down trade barriers with some of Americaâs
most valued trading partners, as they dock into the agreement with these participating nations.
11, What is the bottom line with Fast Track?
If a Member of Congress, due to experience, doesnât trust President Obama to negotiate a good
deal without full and thorough scrutiny, then he/she must oppose fast track because it almost
guarantees passage of treaties he signs. Given President Obamaâs disastrous China climate
deal where the U.S. is supposed to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions for sixteen
years before China cuts its output at all, and the Iranian nuclear deal which provides a pathway
for Iran to get nuclear weapons rather than preventing them, only the most gullible or naĂŻve
would give Obama what Leader McConnell has called âan enormous grant of power.â
12. What effect do treaties have on U.S. law?
Passage of a treaty overrides U.S. laws and regulations where there are contradictions. This
means that a ratified TPP with its twenty-two non-trade-related sections would allow the
Executive Branch to bring U.S. law and regulations into conformity in these areas without
Congressional input at all. Failure to subject it to the two-thirds ratification requirement would
virtually guarantee that President Obamaâs âprogressiveâ treaty, that covers every aspect of the
U.S. economy, becomes the law of the land, with potentially wide-reaching implications. The
same President who has dramatically expanded the Clean Air Act beyond anything that was
contemplated, can be trusted to do the same with open-ended language in a treaty. The very
breadth of the potential impact of the TPP demands that it be subjected to full and complete
Congressional scrutiny including retaining both the two-thirds ratification requirement and the
ability to amend the language where needed.
13. What should a Member of Congress do about fast track?
Learn the facts for themselves. Before voting on fast track, read the draft language of the TPP
to discover what is likely to pass should fast track prevail. Failure to actually read the TPP prior
to supporting fast track is a statement that the Member trusts President Obama without
reservation on this managed trade regulatory deal.
14. What should a citizen do about fast track?
Contact your Members of Congress now. Votes are expected in this Friday, and
President Obama, Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell are putting on a full court press to
get the votes needed for passage. You can make the difference as both Republican and
Democratic Members of Congress are skeptical of granting the President this power. The time is
now. Tell Members to stand up and oppose fast-track trade authority and reject President
Obamaâs fundamental transformation of America.
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WHAT IS TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.The TPP suffers from a serious lack of transparency, threatens to impose more stringent copyright without public input, and pressures foreign governments to adopt unbalanced laws.
Effect on Labor
Although we donât yet know whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will give Americaâs workers a trade agreement that benefits them, what is known is cause for great concern. For example, with regard to labor rights, the outline reads, âTPP countries are discussing elements for a labor chapter that include commitments on labor rights protection and mechanisms to ensure cooperation, coordination and dialogue on labor issues of mutual concern,â but fails to mention International Labor Organization core labor standards or even whether the labor provisions will be enforceable. The TPP must not go back on the progress made in recent years. Thatâs why the AFL-CIO has been fighting hard for a strong labor chapter that ensures workers in any TPP country, including Vietnam, can exercise basic rights such as freedom of association and collective bargaining.
It is not yet clear that all the TPP countries will commit to enforceable labor standards. But Americaâs workers canât go backward: we expect labor commitments that significantly improve upon the Bush-era deals. Because the deal is still being negotiated, now is the time to speak up and share your concerns.
Consumer Rights
Will consumer interests be protected in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? In the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministerial Meeting statement released at the summit, all APEC countries agreed to âfacilitate trade in products derived from innovative agricultural technologies.â âInnovative agricultural technologiesâ include genetically modified seeds that often raise costs and financial risks for small farmers in developing countries while racking up profits for a select few corporations. Add to that a commitment to âadvance regulatory convergence and cooperationâ that emphasizes the economic costs, rather than the societal benefits, of regulation and it sounds like a recipe for less protection for citizens and more rights for Big Business. The TPP Trade Ministersâ Report to Leaders seems to indicate that the goal is to increase trade for tradeâs sake. In particular, the text reads:
Regulatory and other non-tariff barriers increasingly are the major hurdles that companies face in gaining access to foreign markets. To address these barriers, we have agreed to work to improve regulatory practices, eliminate unnecessary barriers, reduce regional divergence in standards, promote transparency, conduct our regulatory processes in a more trade-facilitative manner, eliminate redundancies in testing and certification and promote cooperation on specific regulatory issues.
There is no mention of the prime importance of avoiding the toxic pet food, toothpaste and lead-coated toy scandals of recent years. In fact, food safety is only noted in a sentence that ensures the TPP will âbuild upon existing WTO [World Trade Organization] rights and obligations,â obligations that already have interfered with U.S. laws on dolphin-safe tuna labeling and country-of-origin labels on beef.
