No rest for Sanders supporters on TPP Presented by Semiconductor Industry Association

With help from Doug Palmer, Megan Cassella and Catherine Boudreau

NO REST FOR SANDERS SUPPORTERS ON TPP: The progressive group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders has begun a targeted campaign to sway at least five House Democrats to oppose the TPP in hopes it could change the outcome of a ratification vote — and it’s getting some results.


Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) came out against the deal last week despite the White House’s efforts to gain his support for the pact based on the interests of his trade-oriented south Puget Sound district.

“He was encouraged to step forward, and we’re proud that he did,” said Larry Cohen, the former head of the Communications Workers of America who is leading the anti-TPP effort. “It’s hard in Washington State.”

Our Revolution, which Sanders formed in late August to support liberal candidates, has set its sights on at least five other fence-sitting lawmakers. In a vote that’s expected to have razor-thin margins, plundering just a few Democratic votes the White House hoped to gain could make all the difference. The target list includes Reps. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Ed Perlmutter (Colo.), Beto O’Rourke (Texas), Derek Kilmer (Wash.), and Pennsylvania state Rep. Dwight Evans, who is the front-runner in the race to fill the state’s 2nd Congressional District seat, Cohen said. Read the full story here.

IT’S FRIDAY, NOV. 4! We’re still holding out hope for a November surprise in the final days before the election. Maybe it will be related to trade. Got anything to share? Let me know: [email protected] or @abehsudi.

NO EU IN TISA? There might not be if negotiators meeting in Geneva this week decide that the most feasible path forward for the agreement is to continue moving toward the Dec. 6 deadline and forge a deal among whichever members are ready and able to sign at the concluding ministerial then. That would almost certainly exclude the European Union, a senior official involved in the talks told POLITICO.

With Brussels far from resolving a couple of areas — most prominently data flows, on which the European Commission is potentially months away from establishing a consolidated position — officials are spending the week with their attention divided between finishing up remaining issues and holding informal, bilateral meetings to determine who will be ready to move by December.

Asked whether the deadline could simply be moved to sometime in 2017 in an effort to meet the needs of members, the official emphasized that the issue is not one of time, adding that the five weeks remaining is more than enough time to conclude TISA among members who are willing to move. The benefit to moving ahead could to be establish a concrete pact for some that could easily be expanded further down the road.

But an EU source downplayed the concerns as a "big bluff" spurred on by endgame considerations. "TISA without the EU would become TPP plus a few relatively minor countries," the source said. "Many other participants would anyway object, and in any event it wouldn't be possible to engineer something like this in less than two months." Read the full story here.

TPP GETS A NATIONAL SECURITY BOOST: The TPP is too important to ignore from a national security standpoint and ratification would send a clear signal that America “will continue to be a leader — working with other states — in setting the global rules,” a group of former national security advisers warn in a letter released today.

“Essential truths are inalienable and timeless,” Stephen Hadley and retired generals James Jones and Brent Scowcroft write. “That’s why General Eisenhower’s caution still rings true: ‘If we fail in our trade policy, we may fail in all. Our domestic employment, our standard of living, our security, and the solidarity of the free world — all are involved.’” Read the full letter here.

RYAN’S TPP CALCULATION? House Speaker Paul Ryan has said not to expect a vote on the TPP in the lame-duck session because the agreement falls short in a number of key areas. But there might be other factors behind his hesitation to bring up the pact, said Ed Gerwin, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

“There’s a hard-core group of people in his caucus who don’t like [TPP] and whose votes he may need to retain his speakership,” Gerwin said. Putting the Asia-Pacific pact on the floor and helping President Barack Obama win a major legislative victory might complicate Ryan’s hope of getting support from more conservative Republicans, he said. The GOP Conference is set to hold leadership elections on Nov. 15.

Last year, 190 House Republicans voted to give President Barack Obama trade promotion authority to finish TPP, but 50 others voted no. Among those 50 were Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan and other members of the group, including Reps. Mark Meadows, Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Duncan and Justin Amash.

However, the conservative caucus did not take a united position on TPA, which got the backing of some members including Reps. Matt Salmon, Brian Babin and Scott DesJarlais. The administration also still hopes to persuade at least a few more conservative Republicans to vote for TPP, based on their past support for trade agreements.

RYAN’S DAIRY PROBLEM: Ryan may also be keeping an eye on how the deal plays with dairy farmers back in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Farmers Union this week released some results of a survey it conducted to gauge how the the state’s dairy farmers feel about the TPP. Nearly 1,000 responded, with 80 percent favoring Congress rejecting the deal or placing a moratorium on TPP until concerns over low-cost imports are resolved. There are nearly 10,000 dairy farms in the state, according to USDA data. The survey asked other questions as well, ranging from what should be in the next farm bill and supply management. Read it here.

WTO DIRECTOR GENERAL SELECTION PROCESS FORMALLY STARTS: The World Trade Organization launched the selection process for a new director general Thursday with current WTO chief Roberto Azevedo confirming his interest in seeking a second term at the Geneva-based international trade organization. Azevedo’s first term will come to an end Aug. 31, 2017, shortly before the WTO holds its next full ministerial meeting.

Azevedo’s first three years as director general have been marked by both success and frustration. Under his watch, the WTO struck its first major multilateral deal, the Trade Facilitation Agreement, in its history. But efforts to conclude the long-running Doha round of world trade talks sputtered, with some delegations pronouncing that effort essentially dead.

CUBA REJECTS U.S. TRACTOR INVESTMENT PROPOSAL: The White House’s efforts to ease trade relations with Cuba has hit a snag after Havana denied a proposal by two U.S. businessmen to build a tractor assembly plant in the island’s Mariel Special Economic Zone. The $5 million facility planned by Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal, co-founders of Paint Rock, Ala.-based Cleber LLC, would have been the first American manufacturing company to establish a physical presence there in 50-plus years, Pro Agriculture’s Catherine Boudreau reports.

“We were patient, because we thought the best way to serve the Cuban people was to establish a manufacturing plant in the free-trade zone,” Clemmons said. “We made a big mistake in dealing with the zone of Mariel.”

“But underlying everything is the embargo,” Clemmons added, suggesting that the government body that rejected his company's tractor factory was influenced by greater trade-related tensions. “It puts a significant burden on the Cuban people.” Read the full story here.

WHITE HOUSE WARNS OF WHAT RCEP COULD DO: In a sign that the White House is working to get its lame-duck pro-TPP push off the ground, President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers released a report on Thursday outlining the potential jobs and industries at risk if Congress fails to ratify the Asia-Pacific deal by the end of this year.

Counting on the fact that Asian nations will move to forge their own trade deal if TPP fails — namely, the 16-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — the report says increased competition from China in Japan alone would put nearly 5 million American workers from 35 goods-producing industries at risk.

"If we do not pass TPP, the most likely thing that's going to happen is other countries are going to move forward and continue to deepen their trade engagement with each other," Jason Furman, the council's chairman, told reporters on a conference call. "That will divert trade from the United States, reduce exports, reduce jobs ... and hurt our economy much more than just living with the status quo for another year."

The report says it offers an "extremely conservative assessment of which industries will feel the impact of RCEP," examining only U.S. goods exports to Japan and excluding services exports and industries where China was not considered a direct competitor. It found that within those confines, just under 10 percent of all U.S. goods exports to Japan would be at risk if TPP fails. Read the council’s report here and the full story from Pro Trade’s Megan Cassella here.

WIKILEAKS: WYDEN BRIEFED CLINTON ON TPA BILL: Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden shared details of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation in a private discussion with Hillary Clinton days before the bill dropped in Congress, a new email released by WikiLeaks shows. In the exchange, purportedly hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal email account, Wyden urged the former secretary of State to withhold judgment on TPA and “keep a window open … to try to wait to see what a final agreement looks like.” He added that “Patty and Maria,” presumably referring to Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, who both voted for TPA, felt very strongly about that position.

The email — which appears to have been sent by Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide, in April 2015 — also sheds a bit of light on some ideas that Wyden may have advocated adding to TPA, which he calls “stuff that labor used to dream about.” “Wyden wants to add an early warning alert,” Abedin wrote in the email. “Labor has always said enforcement process is a joke and there is no way to do anything. Wyden has a plan for things electronically and is insisting to Orrin Hatch that he wants this early warning system because labor and business want it.”

Clinton told Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, that she would wait as long as she could to say anything but that “she was going to have a hard time being positive,” according to Abedin’s account. They also discussed a couple of people they both knew and liked who were against TPA but for TPP — ”national security people and economics people, largely operating under the same ideas as HRC.”

Added bonus: Senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan replies with a short response, leading with: “Podesta does a wicked Wyden impression.” Read the exchange here.

ITC FINDS INJURY IN REBAR CASE: U.S. steel rebar producers scored a victory at the U.S. International Trade Commission on Thursday with a unanimous determination that imports from Japan, Taiwan and Turkey are causing injury to the U.S. industry. The decision paves the way for the Commerce Department to continue investigations that could put in place preliminary countervailing and anti-dumping duties late this year and in early 2017.

“Producers in each of these countries are using unfair pricing practices to steal market share from domestic producers,” said Alan Price, a trade attorney representing the Rebar Trade Action Coalition. “As a result, the domestic rebar industry has been forced to lower prices and has experienced significant declines in profitability.”

AG ADVISORY COMMITTEES SEEK NEW MEMBERS: The USDA, in cooperation with USTR, announced that it is accepting nominations for new agricultural trade advisory committee members until Nov. 18. The agencies are looking to fill slots on the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee as well as six Agricultural Technical Advisory Committees that represent specific commodity sectors: animals and animal products; fruits and vegetables; grains, feed, oilseeds and planting seeds; processed foods; sweeteners and sweetener products; and tobacco, cotton and peanuts.

INTERNATIONAL OVERNIGHT

— Australian Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said his country will continue to pursue bilateral trade deals in the absence of TPP, Bloomberg reports.

— U.S. farmers are disappointed their concerns have been given nary a mention in the presidential election, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports.

— Japan and Russian trade officials agree to flesh out a number of areas in which the two countries can increase economic cooperation, Kyodo reports.

THAT'S ALL FOR MORNING TRADE! See you again soon! In the meantime, drop the team a line: [email protected] and @ABehsudi; [email protected] and @mmcassella; [email protected] and @tradereporter; [email protected] and @mjkorade; and [email protected] and @JsonHuffman. You can also follow @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Trade.

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