Legislation needed to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership is expected to be introduced in Congress as early as next month, as Republicans and the administration strain to get House and Senate Democrats on board.
Many progressive legislators and their allies are confident that after a big victory on Net Neutrality they can marshal their network of supporters to resist the secretive corporate-backed trade deal.
It would have to be effective in a matter of weeks, however. The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said this week that the advancement of Trade Promotion Authority—the “fast-track” bill through which Congress would give up its right to amend the TPP—will likely occur in April.
Fast-track is practically necessary for a multilateral deal to come to fruition, given the additional painstaking negotiations that would need to occur in the event of amendments.
Between now and next month, Hatch and the ranking member of his committee, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), are ironing out disagreements over the language of the proposal. Wyden said that he wants release valves so that Congress can jump ship “if the administration fails to meet specific thresholds,” The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Hatch described any possible uncertainty as “a dangerous precedent” for trade negotiations.
The Post also reported that President Obama personally phoned Wyden three weeks ago to thank the senator for his support in working to advance TPA.
But, as an indication that the passage of fast-track is not a given, that might not look so good for Wyden next year when his seat is up for grabs. By backing TPA, he could be inviting an election challenge from the Working Families Party, its state director told The Huffington Post.
“Our voters are very interested in trade and that will be a deciding factor in who gets our nomination” Karly Edwards said. The party typically endorses Democrats, but she said that it would be difficult “to imagine a situation where Working Families voters find it in their hearts to forgive a vote like that.”
Opponents of multilateral trade deals argue that–from the 1994 North American Free Trade Deal to China’s 2001 assent to the World Trade Organization, to more recent but smaller agreements–they have caused the US manufacturing sector and middle class incomes to erode. By lowering taxes on imports and making it more attractive for companies to invest factories where environmental standards and workers’ rights are relatively weak, most Americans consequently find job opportunities diminish.
As far as trade-backing Democrats are concerned, however, Wyden could find himself in a unique bind. He has been a prominent ally to progressives on internet regulations and government surveillance, but now finds himself at odds with them. The TPP, internet activists argue, could contain copyright provisions that would hinder the free flow of information online.
“Sen. Wyden is one of the leading defenders of users’ rights and a staunch fighter for the free and open Internet in Congress,” Electronic Frontier Foundation intellectual property expert Maira Sutton said. “We need to call on him to continue to stand with users and fight back against any version of this bill that does not address critical problems in the trade negotiation process.”
But if the senior senator’s profile on both Net Neutrality clash and trade stand out, he does not stand alone. Sutton said that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “was one of the most vocal proponents to defend Net Neutrality” but “unfortunately…wishy-washy on Fast Track and the TPP.”
Although the top House Dem appeared last Thursday at an FCC Title II vote celebration at a bar on U Street in Northwest Washington, she could soon find herself at odds with many of the party’s attendees if, as she has said, “we can find a path to yes.” Joining the EFF among interest groups pivoting from promoting Net Neutrality to combating the TPP are Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and Credo Mobile.
And joining them are a coalition of labor groups and environmentalists who have long opposed free trade deals. This week, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, released an alternative vision of trade policy on the same day that he met with members of the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the Communications Workers of America, and the United Steelworkers.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Finance Committee alongside Wyden, also signaled his skepticism of the President’s trade agenda on Thursday, noting on Twitter that he met the day before with union representatives–from the AFL-CIO, the CWA, United Steelworkers, and United Automobile Workers–to discuss “trade deals that hurt workers.”
The Obama Administration has acknowledged criticism and claimed that the trade agreements it has been pursuing are different. In a set of talking points on its website, the White House said that the TPP would “increase accountability and high standards.” And in a letter to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) obtained by The Sentinel, US Trade Representative Michael Froman acknowledged problems with a resolution mechanism in the TPP, but said the deal is “designed to prevent the kind of abuses of the investor-State [sic] dispute settlement that have happened under agreements negotiated by other countries.”
A particularly controversial procedure, the investor-state dispute resolution process can only be brought, as its name suggests, by investors. Governments can never win damages, and the institution cannot be petitioned by labor unions, environmental groups or other public interest stakeholders. It has been at the center of heated decisions and multimillion dollar payouts to corporations authorized by NAFTA and the WTO. And while it has been stated that the body is needed to prevent regulations that discriminate based on country of origin, it is often used to enforce vague laissez-faire standards that parties to trade agreements must comply with.
But whether the administration would avoid similar kerfuffles in the future is currently impossible to determine, barring a leak. Legislators are privy to USTR proposals, but are currently unable to scrutinize the draft agreement. Many have asked. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in January, joined Sens. Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in recently calling on the USTR to release the working TPP–the so-called “bracketed text”–to their offices for review
The secrecy has fueled fears that the deal will, for most Americans, magnify the corrosive effects of past deals. Anxiety of this sort is particularly heightened with tariffs between many delegations to the TPP practically non-existent, and the USTR calling for the removal of “non-tariff barriers” like “data localization requirements” that make banking. regulators’ jobs easier.
“Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is sometimes called insanity,” Sen. Sanders quipped last week. “If we think that a new trade agreement based on the same principles of the old trade agreements are going to bring different results, I think we are very, very wrong.”
UPDATE: Language in this article has been changed to reflect the fact that a coalition built to resist the TPP has not been “cobbled together,” and the fact that fast-track is expected to be introduced in April at the earliest.
