WP reporter Ed White filed these stories from Washington, D.C.
U.S. president Barack Obama’s administration thinks the Trans Pacific Partnership can be approved before the November elections, but few share that opinion.
“I don’t see us voting on it before a lame duck (session of the U.S. Congress),” said the Democrat minority leader of the Senate agriculture committee April 26 to the North American Agricultural Journalists.
Will enough senators vote for TPP even after the November elections, when all the partisan pressure is off?
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“I think it’s a close call. I don’t know right now. I think it’s up in the air,” said Deb Stabenow, who described herself as having “great concerns about how it is presently constituted.”
That won’t help the TPP become the gigantic trading bloc promoters have wanted, but one former agriculture secretary said Canada would gain an advantage if the U.S. failed to approve TPP but Canada did.
“It would look very bad for us,” said Dan Glickman, former president Bill Clinton’s long time agriculture secretary, to NAAJ.
“It certainly wouldn’t help us.”
Canada would increase access to many markets while the U.S. fell behind, Glickman said.
A minority of Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives are also anti-TPP, as well as many House Democrats.
House agriculture committee Democrat minority leader Collin Peterson shared Stabenow’s doubtfulness about TPP passing before the election.
“It will not pass if it’s brought up now,” said Peterson.
He sounded unhappy with the TPP, echoing the sentiments of many Democrats and moderate Americans.
“This is not a free-trade agreement, in terms of agriculture. It’s a managed trade agreement.”
And he levelled his skepticism and unhappiness with TPP at Canada and the modest lowering of dairy protections Canada had to make in the deal.
“We are letting Canada off the hook,” said Peterson, whose western Minnesota district goes right up to the Manitoba-U.S. border.“Canada took us to the cleaners in (the North American Free Trade Agreement). And the only chance we have to fix that is in this agreement, in my opinion. And this does not fix it.”
Trade agreements have become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential primaries campaigns.
Hillary Clinton once supported the agreement, but now says she is opposed to much of it. Donald Trump rages against TPP and other agreements that he says weaken the U.S.
Even though few political observers or politicians believe the White House will be successful in getting TPP approved before the November elections, Obama officials are pushing hard for approval.
“We are hopeful and we think Congress needs to consider this agreement this year,” said Darci Vetter, the U.S. Trade Representative’s agriculture negotiator, in a meeting with NAAJ.
“It is, perhaps, a bogeyman of this campaign, but actually withdrawing from the global economy? Not an option. We couldn’t even if we wanted to.”
Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack sounded like he believed TPP approval is still possible, although he did not mention a timeline. He had just met with the Japanese agriculture minister and “I assured the minister that I was confident that at some point in time the U.S. Congress would approve TPP because of the benefits to American agriculture.”
Millions of Americans have lost manufacturing jobs in the past decade and many Americans have become re-employed at lower wages.
Millions more still have jobs in the manufacturing industries but fear they will lose their jobs due to lower wages in countries like China.
He thinks a stronger U.S. economy, helped by major infrastructure spending, could change attitudes.
“If we could give people some belief that we are really going to spend resources to rebuild the country . . . we could produce millions of jobs, make people believe the country is competitive, it would be a lot easier to sell trade agreements, if people believed there was good news at home,” said Glickman.
