Sometime tomorrow (we think), the House of Representatives will vote on giving the president Trade Promotion Authority (known as TPA). I’ve seen a lot of confusion going around on just what this vote means, and I’m hoping this post can clear things up (full disclosure: I support TPA).
What the Vote is
Specifically, Congress is giving the president the authority to change any policy that would need changing to comply with a new trade deal – pursuant to final Congressional agreement by an up-or-down vote on the deal.
I emphasized that last part for two reasons (1) most of the opposition to TPA seems to forget or ignore that part, and (2) in the past, Congress didn’t even ask for that. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Congress gave the president the authority to cut tariffs and trade duties unilaterally in accordance with any trade deals he reached. The only conditions Congress requested (of the Kennedy Administration), were to have Members of Congress on the trade negotiation team and the creation of trade assistance programs to help workers affected by the loss of tariff protections. Other than that, the president could (and did) do whatever he wanted.
By the 1970s, Congress believed it had weakened itself too much in the recent past (a belief not completely unwarranted) and made itself the final arbiter of any trade deal. To ensure that deals could still be negotiated with relative ease, Congress only gave itself an up-or-down vote on any future deals, but that vote was still required. This has been the status quo since 1974, until the Authority expired in the aughts.
What the Vote is Not
Contrary to what you might have heard or read, Congress is not voting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (known as TPP). In fact, there is no TPP agreement; it’s still in negotiation. That’s why various members of Congress have to go into a secured room to look at TPP documents – those documents reveal the status of ongoing negotiations, not an agreement.
How do I know this? Well, in part, it’s because I follow Canadian politics, too, and while they’re obviously following this, they’re not even sure they’ll sign the deal (Financial Post, emphasis added):
Canadian negotiators will have to respond to persistent pressure from the U.S., Australia and New Zealand to tear down the wall of triple-digit duties that enable supply management in Canada’s dairy and poultry sectors.
Since virtually no information about the real state of the talks has been made public pursuant to a secrecy agreement among all 12 countries, no one can tell how determined the attackers of supply-management are. But it seems unlikely that they will be easily mollified. Protecting supply management may be a task that Canadian negotiators, or any negotiators, cannot accomplish. The threat has already been made by a high Obama trade official to the effect that Canada could be expelled, not exactly over cheese, eggs and chicken, but for declining to accept a core free-trade principle. Of course, no country can push another out of the group, but the alternative before any member to accepting conditions negotiated and agreed by all the others is obviously to exit.
There is no way a deal is in place, even “unofficially,” if one of the participants (Canada) is causing so much flak that they might be left out of the deal entirely.
I mention this because, again, a number of people assume that a deal is already in place, and once TPA is enacted (if it is), then the deal will be locked in without any chance of further review or decision. That is simply not the case.
So why does the President need TPA?
Trade agreements are the hardest to pull together, for the obvious reason that they have more impact on domestic policy than just about any other international agreement. More most nations (which have parliamentary majorities), the government’s support in the legislature for a deal is all but given, so no one worries about a deal falling apart in the legislature “after the fact.” Obviously, we don’t have the situation, and we’re a large enough market that our separation of powers makes other nations a little nervous. In fact, President Obama’s lack of trade authority is one of the things holding up the TPP (no one wants to sign if Congress ties it up in committee for years, or amends it to shreds).
Now, as I said, I support TPA. I think Congress would be doing the right thing by forgoing making amendments to trade deals in exchange for lower international tariffs on our goods and greater choice of the world’s goods for our consumers. I don’t expect unanimous agreement on that, but I do want to make sure we all understand what we’re arguing here. This isn’t about the Trans-Pacific Partnership; that debate will come later.
This is about whether or not the desire of Congressmen to amend a piece of legislation is more important than opening markets to our producers and more consumer choice for all Americans. I say it isn’t, and that’s why I support TPA.
@deejaymcguire | facebook.com/people/Dj-McGuire | DJ’s posts
