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Tag: pacific rim
Bipartisan Agreement Gives Trade Pact A Boost
April 17, 2015
By Don Lee, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders reached agreement Thursday on a bipartisan bill that should ease passage of a sweeping Pacific Rim trade deal, giving a boost to one of President Barack Obama’s top foreign policy goals but putting him in an unusual alliance with Republicans against many in his own party.
The so-called fast-track legislation was seen as a necessary step for the White House to bring to a conclusion the long-delayed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Proponents said the 12-nation trade deal would deliver significant benefits by opening markets and establishing rules on commerce and investment that will help American workers and an array of U.S. industries, including West Coast ports, entertainment companies and drug makers.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the economic centerpiece of Obama’s policy shift toward Asia. He has staked his legacy as the self-proclaimed “first Pacific president” on completing the deal, even at the expense of alienating many Democrats who remain deeply suspicious of claims that free-trade deals are good for American workers.
While Obama and many businesses lauded the agreement announced Thursday by key House and Senate leaders, Democratic lawmakers, trade unions and environmental groups responded with a flurry of statements and news conferences denouncing the legislation.
The AFL-CIO said it would launch a large-scale campaign to pressure more than 50 Democratic members of Congress who may be on the fence to vote against the bill.
Fast-track authority would let Obama strike a trade agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, including Japan, Canada and Mexico, with the assurance that Congress must approve or reject it with no amendments. The Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are in the last stages, but Japan and some other countries have been reluctant to show all their cards, concerned that Congress might alter the final agreement.
The push to pass the bill will trigger a high-stakes political battle. Republican leaders generally favor speeding up the path to a trade agreement and have highlighted the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a rare issue of agreement with the Obama administration.
But the president will need to overcome resistance from many Democrats worried about the trade pact’s impact on U.S. jobs. Some tea party Republicans, particularly in the House, also complain the president has already exceeded his executive authority and should not be given new powers.
The issue also is likely to play a role in the 2016 presidential campaign, particularly for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton. She will face pressure from unions and progressive Democrats to oppose fast-track authority and the agreement, though it was her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who oversaw passage of the last big trade pact, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Obama vowed to take congressional concerns into consideration, but stressed that the trade pact was critical to boosting U.S. exports and responding to the economic threat from China, which would not be part of the agreement. The pact, one of the largest in history, would join countries that make up 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.
“It’s no secret that past trade deals haven’t always lived up to their promise, and that’s why I will only sign my name to an agreement that helps ordinary Americans get ahead,” Obama said Thursday.
“At the same time, at a moment when 95 percent of our potential customers live outside our borders, we must make sure that we, and not countries like China, are writing the rules for the global economy,” he said.
Democratic lawmakers and opponents of fast-track authority complained that Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations have been conducted in secrecy and said it would be a mistake for Congress to give up its ability to change elements of an agreement before voting on it. Liberal Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are expected to launch a fierce legislative push to block the bill.
Opponents also warn the pact will hurt the environment, kill U.S. jobs and benefit mostly large multinational corporations. Hollywood has been lobbying hard for the deal, which promises to bring tighter copyright protections for movie and music companies.
Among critics of the proposed agreement is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
“The ILWU handles containers that represent millions of outsourced and offshore industrial jobs,” said Craig Merrilees, an ILWU spokesman. The agreement is “a grab-bag of goodies for corporate America.”
Thursday’s compromise, aimed at getting enough Senate Democrats to break with their party to support the deal, would require White House trade officials to provide Congress with greater access to the terms of the deal and make updates and full details available to the public before it is signed.
The bill also includes a mechanism that would essentially revoke fast-track authority should U.S. trade negotiators fail to meet certain objectives, including promoting human rights, improving labor conditions and safeguarding the environment, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
Wyden, whose support for fast-track authority was seen as key to bringing along other Democrats, struck the deal with Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, the Senate panel’s chairman, and Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., head of the House Ways and Means Committee.
In announcing the bill, the three lawmakers issued a joint statement saying that the legislation “establishes concrete rules for international trade negotiations to help the United States deliver strong, high-standard trade agreements that will boost American exports and create new economic opportunities and better jobs for American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs.”
Democratic lawmakers, however, said the measure — introduced in the Senate and to be followed in the House — did not include any language to prevent currency manipulation and was no better overall than the previous fast-track legislation that expired in 2007.
“It’s worse than the (previous) version,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who called the legislation a “sellout.”
“Those are noble goals that won’t be enforced in any way,” he said of the provisions on human rights, which were not in the prior fast-track authority.
A separate but similar House version of the legislation could face a tougher test as the ranking member on the House Ways and Means Committee, Sander Levin, D-Mich., and other top Democratic lawmakers are opposed to fast-track. Sherman said he expected House Republicans to try to win a few more Democrats by tacking on sweeteners, such as aid for Africa.
(Times staff writer Stuart Pfeifer in Los Angeles contributed this report.)
(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Photo: Bridget Coila via Flickr
Study: No Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Be A Setback For U.S., Latin America
July 24, 2014
By Mimi Whitefield, The Miami Herald
A new Atlantic Council study says that failure to win approval for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would be a “serious geopolitical and commercial setback” for the United States and Latin America.
The United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries, which represent 40 percent of the world’s economy, are currently negotiating the trade and investment liberalization pact. But its prospects are unclear.
Chief negotiators for the member nations — the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam — are currently trying to iron out market access and rules.
Trade negotiators from the United States and Japan also recently met to discuss their differences over autos and agricultural trade — an effort the study calls an “urgent priority for TPP.”
Japan’s agriculture team will be in Washington the first week of August for further talks.
“We’re down to a limited number of remaining issues. The most difficult issues are generally dealt with in the final stages,” acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Wendy Cutler said Wednesday in Washington during an event to launch the study.
Even though there are only three Latin American members of TPP, the study said the region will play a “central role” in a Trans-Pacific agreement. It recommended that Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, and other interested Latin countries be welcomed to the talks.
In recent years, many Latin American countries have been at the forefront of trade liberalization and 11 have free-trade agreements with the United States and 10 with Europe.
But if TPP fails, the impact on Latin America would be “particularly acute,” because the region has “no Plan B of this magnitude,” according to the study “Bridging the Pacific: The Americas’ New Economic Frontier.”
Already, Asia is Latin America’s second largest trading partner after the United States, and Latin American countries’ exports to Asia grew by 590 percent between 2000 and 2011. During that same time, Latin America’s exports to the U.S. grew by 77 percent.
Most of the region’s exports to Asia are commodities. If the TPP were to include liberal investment and services provisions, “it could also help the region to diversify its exports to include more manufactured goods as well as finance and telecommunications,” the study said.
As Asian nations’ wages rise, becoming closer to Latin American levels, Latin American exports should become more competitive in world markets and the region could become a more profitable place for Asian companies to invest, the study said.
Beyond trade and investment, the study said, TPP has important security implications and serves to reassure the United States’ Asian-Pacific partners in the face of a rising China.
“The talks are as much about China as the countries that are taking part,” said Peter Rashish, author of the study and a senior trade adviser of Transnational Strategy Group.
The study said economic partnerships such as TPP “are one element of soft power and send a strong message of shared interests.”
Ultimately, Rashish said, China should be invited to join the TPP but with its recent actions in the East and South China Seas, now isn’t the time and could send the wrong message.
Before any new members or observers are added, Cutler said, the top priority is “concluding negotiations among existing members.”
The pact is being negotiated at a time when Americans are more skeptical of international engagement. The TPP and Trade Promotion Authority, which allows the president to negotiate a trade pact and submit it to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments, is expected to face a hard slog through Congress.
The secretive nature of TPP negotiations also have come under fire not only in the U.S. Congress but in parliaments of other member nations. Negotiators have been reluctant to disclose details of the draft document — although portions have been leaked.
TPP critics have complained about perceived lack of protection for U.S. textile firms and inadequate environmental safeguards. Some have contended that instead of creating jobs, TPP would cost jobs.
But Rashish said approval of TPP is essential: “With TPP’s failure, the U.S. and like-minded countries in Latin America would be ceding leadership on global economic governance to other economies which have a more state-based approach to domestic economies and a different approach to international economic competition.”
AFP Photo / Jewel Samad
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