'Fast track' trade fight moves to House

The Senate on Friday approved a “fast track” trade promotion authority bill that will help President Barack Obama conclude a massive Asia-Pacific trade agreement and sets the stage for a fierce battle in the House when lawmakers return in June.

The 62-37 vote followed two weeks of debate on the measure, which would allow the White House to submit trade agreements to Congress for straight up-or-down votes without any amendments. It also would renew the five-decade-old Trade Adjustment Assistance program to help retrain workers who have lost their jobs because of trade.


Fourteen Democrats joined with 48 Republicans to give Obama the authority. A strong push was needed to overcome efforts to delay the bill by opponents including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the Senate’s leading critic of trade agreements; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a favorite of the progressive wing of the Democratic party; and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent running for president.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, another foe of the bill, walked over to shake hands with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, the chief Republican architect of the bill, after supporters won a key procedural vote.

“From the very start, we’ve known that the real battle against fast track for the job-killing [Trans-Pacific Partnership] would take place in the House and now that it appears set to head there, we’re ready,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America, a progressive group.

Supporters of the trade bill narrowly defeated — by a 48-51 vote — a bipartisan amendment offered by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) to fight foreign currency manipulation, a hot-button issue in major manufacturing states. The measure had drawn a White House veto threat on the grounds it could backfire by exposing U.S. Federal Reserve actions to possible trade sanctions.

“The administration has made it abundantly clear that President Obama will veto any TPA bill that contains this amendment,” Hatch said ahead of the vote, warning approval of the provision would also likely kill the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership pact between the United States, Japan and 10 other countries covering about 40 percent of world economic output.

Portman, a former U.S. trade representative under President George W. Bush, made an extensive appeal for the measure during lunch with other Republican senators, a source said. Portman faces a tough re-election battle next year in a state that has long been sensitive to international trade.

The Senate instead approved an alternate amendment put forward by Hatch and ranking Finance member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that gives trade negotiators a menu of options for dealing with foreign currency manipulation, which is blamed for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, including enforceable rules.

Stabenow took to the floor to attack the Hatch-Wyden measure, calling it too weak.

“Currency manipulation has cost us five million jobs and counting. Enough is enough,” she argued — in vain.

Senators also rejected a Warren amendment that would have served to strip from future trade agreements the controversial “investor-state dispute settlement” mechanism, which allows companies to sue for damages over government actions that damage their investment.

“This is not a partisan issue. Experts on the right agree that ISDS is a real threat,” Warren said, shortly before the amendment failed by a 39-60 vote. “A provision to give corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system should not be part of our free trade agreements.”

Proponents say the mechanism is needed to ensure U.S. investors risking millions, if not billions, of dollars have some recourse against arbitrary foreign government actions. They say fears raised by opponents are overstated.

“In three decades, our country has never lost an investor dispute case and has never paid a dime in penalties,” Wyden said. “Here’s our record: 17 cases, 17 victories. These provisions are about raising the world to our economy’s level of safety for investment.”

The Senate rejected an amendment that would require Congress to approve negotiations with any country, such as China, that may want to join the TPP pact and another measure would have killed the Trade Adjustment Assistance program used to help retrain workers displaced by import competition or factories moving abroad.

A high-profile amendment to stop the transfer of a catfish inspection program from the Food and Drug Administration to the Agriculture Department failed to get a vote because it was ruled not germane to the bill. Before the amendment could be dismissed, Sen. John McCain (D-Ariz.), its main sponsor, delivered another blast on the Senate floor, saying the program is a “classic example of protectionism” aimed primarily at blocking imports from Vietnam and other foreign suppliers.

The seven amendments debated Friday were a small portion of the 200 filed on the trade promotion authority bill. Democratic foes accused Republicans of blocking many important amendments and prematurely cutting off debate, while Republicans accused the opponents of refusing to cooperate with efforts to keep the bill moving.

Still, the final vote for the bill provides some momentum heading into what is expected to an intense House fight.

As few as 18 of Obama’s fellow Democrats in that chamber could vote for the measure, requiring Republicans to provide the bulk of support. But at least 40 House Republicans could also oppose the measure, setting the stage for a razor-thin victory or an embarrassing narrow defeat. Many conservatives who believe Obama has already overstepped his bounds as president are wary of giving him additional authority.

The White House issued a statement immediately following the vote to encourage quick passage of both trade promotion authority legislation and Trade Adjustment Assistance.

Final congressional approval would give a boost to talks on the Asia-Pacific trade deal, which are already well into their fifth year, making it one of the longest U.S. trade negotiations in history. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman declared the talks were in the “end game” as long ago as late 2013, but the lack of trade promotion authority has prevented countries from finishing the deal.

Proponents say fast track is needed because it’s too hard for the United States, Japan, Vietnam and other TPP countries to make the final politically difficult concessions to reach an agreement if Congress can change the final deal. But critics say the prohibition against amendments is undemocratic and undermines Congress’ constitutional jurisdiction over trade.

Obama, or whoever is the next president, could also use the fast track legislation, which would last for six years, to also win approval of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed free trade agreement between the United States and the 28-nation European Union that would be even larger than the TPP pact.

The U.S. and EU hope for a deal before Obama leaves office, but failure to pass fast-track would be a blow for those talks as well as other negotiations, including the 14-year-old Doha round of world trade talks.

Victoria Guida, Burgess Everett and David Rogers contributed to this story