Obama made calls to get final TPP deal done

President Obama on Tuesday said he manned the phones to push an expansive Asia-Pacific trade deal across the finish line.

Obama said he talked to prime ministers and presidents as well as U.S. businesses and environmental groups to explain the importance of completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major piece of his economic policy and pivot to the Pacific Rim.

{mosads}”At the very end, you always have a few things that you’ve just got to get over the hump,” Obama said during a Marketplace interview.

The next step is to get the TPP text published for public scrutiny.

“Now our goal is to make sure that everybody here in the United States is informed about it,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Obama made his first sales pitch since TPP’s Monday completion, touting the deal’s benefits and expressing confidence that Congress would ultimately pass the agreement that is aimed at raising the bar on trade rules in the region.

The president touted that the deal cuts 18,000 tariffs on U.S. exports and would strengthen environmental and labor standards in the 11 other countries — including Japan, Mexico and Canada — that have joined the United States in the deal.

Without the TPP, China, which isn’t part of the agreement, would wind up setting rules in the region.

Instead, with TPP, China’s reformers could move forward with a stronger hand that shows how better trade policies generate economic growth.

“If they see that all their neighbors are operating a high level, then I am confident that they will adapt to the rules that we’ve set up, as opposed to us adapting or being locked out of these markets because they’ve set rules that advantage the old style of doing business,” Obama said.

Congress will have several months to examine the deal — which lawmakers can’t amend or filibuster — before taking votes sometime early next year.

Between now and then, Obama and his trade team will have their hands full walking lawmakers through the agreement and convincing them to support it.

“The more I’m out there making that case, but more importantly, the more individual farmers, individual ranchers, individual manufacturers who are selling goods in these markets are able the make the case,” Obama told Brownfield Ag News on Tuesday in a separate interview.

“That ultimately is going to be what sways Congress.”

The president acknowledged that while the TPP doesn’t make up for job losses created by past trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States must look forward. 

“I can’t make up for all the problems that happened in the past, but I can make sure that what I’m doing now is good for American manufacturing, good for American workers, good for American farmers,” he told Brownfield Ag News.

He argued that mistakes of the past provide no reason to shirk away from the United States taking the lead in expanding global trade in the future.  

“What we can’t do is think that somehow if we draw a moat around this country that we’re going to be able to avoid globalization and technology, because frankly when you look at job loss and lost leverage, automation and technology has probably contributed more than trade has to that problem,” Obama said in the Marketplace interview.  

“The anxieties are real, the concerns are real, but the prescription is not for us to try to look backward. The prescription here is for us to look forward, and that’s what this trade deal does.”