Trade chief: Congress could get Pacific deal by year’s end

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Wednesday he is confident Congress will approve a massive trans-Pacific trade agreement, possibly by year’s end. 

Froman said the “likelihood is very high that Congress will pass” the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), because it will be a strong agreement reflecting the “enormous input by Congress.”

“This process, going through the [trade promotion authority] process, has been enormously useful from the perspective of making absolutely clear what Congress expects from us in terms of bringing back high-standard agreements,” Froman said at a Politico Playbook breakfast.

{mosads}With trade promotion authority (TPA), or fast-track, in the books, Froman said the first order of business is to complete the TPP negotiations and bring that agreement to Congress for approval.

Negotiators are still working out a final batch of tricky issues, Froman said, but he predicted Congress could pass the Asia-Pacific pact by the end of the year.

Negotiators of the developing 12-nation agreement are aiming to complete a deal this summer. A key meeting between the countries’ leaders could happen by the end of the month. 

Froman said he is taking lessons from the fast-track fight to pave the way for passage.

“I think the main lesson I learned over the past couple of years of working on this is just how proactive we need to be in addressing concerns. There’s a lot of myths, a lot of misinformation out there about trade and there are legitimate concerns underneath some of those myths and misinformation,” he said. 

“We need to recognize those concerns and at the same time make sure we get the facts out there about how we’re addressing those concerns, and that’s what we’ll be doing over the course of the next several months with regard to the TPP.”

Froman said the United States and the 11 other nations are in the final stages of negotiating the TPP down to a reasonable number of outstanding issues but “by definition those issues tend to be the most difficult.” 

The outstanding issues are centered on opening markets in Japan and Canada as well as working through concerns over intellectual property protections and state-owned enterprises. 

He also hopes to complete the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal before Obama leaves office in January 2017 and expects to make very good progress on three ongoing negotiations in Geneva — the World Trade Organization’s Information Technology Agreement, the Environmental Goods Agreement and the 24-party Trade in International Services Agreement.

Even though she bucked the White House, Froman praised House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for setting up in-depth meetings with her members and trade officials to discuss the deal. 

“I think that was enormously useful in terms of giving an opportunity both for the critics and our opponents to express their point of view, to be heard, to have input, to give us real feedback, which helped us shape our negotiating positions,” he said.  

“But also for those who were undecided and wanted to learn more about TPP and what we were negotiating to get a better understanding as well,” he added. 

Despite overwhelming Democratic opposition to fast-track, Froman said he doesn’t believe he underestimated the strength of Democratic opposition. 

“Trade issues always been very tough,” he said, citing debates since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement more than 20 years ago. 

“Trade legislation in the past has largely passed with Republican support and a critical mass of Democrats, and it was no different this time,” he said.

Froman also gave props to pro-trade Democrats who “rolled up their sleeves” and dug into the TPP negotiations in great detail and “asked us very challenging questions” in repeated trips to Capitol Hill.

In the end, 28 House Democrats and 13 in the Senate backed fast-track. 

And they made it clear while that they supporting TPA they would be “holding our feet to the fire” to get their vote on the TPP, he said. 

Overall, the trade fight, “underscored that we live in a global economy, we can’t afford not to show leadership, we can’t afford not be to be engaged and let someone else define the rules of the road that might lead to a race to the bottom,” Froman said. 

“And we can’t afford not to use trade agreements to shape globalization.”