The most important trade bill in a decade has pitted Harry Reid against President Barack Obama. Liberal Democrat Rosa DeLauro against moderate Democrat Ron Kind. Labor unions against pro-business Democrats. And Elizabeth Warren against virtually everyone who supports a landmark piece of legislation that would allow the president to close what could be the biggest free-trade deal in history.

The open warring among Democrats over fast-track trade legislation, and the party’s broader existential crisis on free trade, grew more pronounced Thursday as senior lawmakers announced a breakthrough on the trade bill. Many Democrats still feel the burn, 20 years later, of lost manufacturing jobs from the North American Free Trade Agreement — pushed through by former President Bill Clinton — and they fear another Democratic president is on the verge of turning his back on working-class Americans by negotiating a trade deal that would send jobs overseas.


What’s at stake substantively is giving the president streamlined authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free-trade deal that would dwarf NAFTA. But there’s also much more at stake politically for a Democratic Party whose progressive wing is enjoying an upswing thanks to the aggressive populism of Warren and liberals like Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are unabashedly anti-free trade deal. Obama wants to cement a legacy on global free trade, but his work negotiating with Republicans has created several factions within the Democratic Party.

Take Kind and DeLauro. Both Democrats come to the fast-track debate from opposite sides.

Kind, a Wisconsin lawmaker who joined the trade-friendly New Democrat Coalition, has provided solid support for the White House, boosting its message that the TPP, which includes enhanced labor and environment protections, isn’t reminiscent of the trade policy of years past.

DeLauro, from Connecticut, has been a central figure in the fight against the bill, forming a powerful progressive coalition of labor, environment, social justice and religious groups that argue any improvements are window dressing at best.

“The single biggest economic issue facing American families is that jobs do not pay enough to live on,” she said following the Trade Promotion Authority bill’s introduction on Thursday. “Fast tracking the TPP would make it easier for corporations to offshore Americans jobs and force our workers to compete with those in Vietnam making less than 60 cents an hour.”

While the New Dems on Thursday said they were still studying the legislation, they were encouraged by the inclusion of provisions to protect workers and renew trade preference programs. Kind has yet to issue a formal statement, but in January, the Wisconsin lawmaker talked favorably about fast track.

“You can complain about [the fast-track bill] all you want, but if you allow a Republican Congress to amend and change [future trade deals] you’re going to end up in a worse position than what you started with,” Kind said. “It doesn’t make sense for a Democratic member to oppose it.”

The internal Democratic wars are spilling into the presidential campaign as well, putting Hillary Clinton on the spot.

Clinton has been reluctant to show her hand on the pending trade legislation, although she voiced support for the massive Asia-Pacific pact that the administration is negotiating while serving as Obama’s secretary of state. When running against Obama for president in 2008, she instead said the U.S. needed to take a "timeout" on trade.

Other potential Democratic candidates, including former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, have assumed the progressive populist mantle and are already positioning themselves to Clinton’s left by preemptively coming out against the TPP.

Unlike Clinton, Warren has been unequivocal in her opposition to fast-track authority and the Asia trade deal, and that's one of the reasons some anti-trade liberals keep pushing her to get in the presidential race, though she continues to say she is not interested.

Warren declared herself all in on the battle against fast track and the TPP deal at a rally on Wednesday.

“We’re here today to fight,” the Massachusetts Democrat said, whipping up a crowd of about 1,200 people in a park facing the Capitol Building. “We are here to fight. Are you ready to fight?”

Most other Democrats in Congress, too, are skeptical of Obama’s free-trade agenda and are expected to vote against the trade promotion authority legislation, which will fast track trade deals through Congress by limiting amendments and subjecting the agreements to up-or-down votes.

The trade promotion authority bill introduced Thursday puts Obama and others who support the measure where they were a little more than a year ago when Reid stopped the legislation dead in its tracks. The Senate Democratic leader has never liked the legislation, voting against it in 1997 and 2002. This time, however, the GOP controls the Senate.

Past trade deals “haven’t always lived up to their promise,” Obama said in a statement issued Thursday, echoing a comment he made in his State of the Union address. But he asserted that he would only sign his name to an agreement that “helps ordinary Americans get ahead.”

“The bill put forward today would help us write those rules in a way that avoids the mistakes from our past, seize opportunities for our future, and stay true to our values,” Obama said.

In the Senate, where Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, wants a vote by late April, the fast-track trade bill will need six Democrats to support it to get to the 60-vote filibuster-breaking threshold.

However, at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) protested plans to rush to a vote.

“Not fair and not adequate on such an important issue,” the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat told Chairman Orrin Hatch. “Not fair. Not fair. And you are a fair-minded man.”

In the House, Republicans want a vote before the current legislative session breaks for the Memorial Day recess, Rep. Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican, said Thursday. The tally is expected to be close.

As few as 10 House Democrats, primarily from the ranks of the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition, are firmly committed to supporting the legislation. The measure needs 218 votes to pass in the lower chamber, which means getting the yeas of anywhere from 10 to 50 Democrats, depending on how many of the 247 Republicans in the House vote against the trade bill. Estimates of Republican defections vary widely from two dozen to as many as 60.

“What I can tell you, which is good news, is a lot of members are feeling the heat,” Sanders said Wednesday night to constituents belonging to the liberal group Democracy for America.

“Whether we can beat it in the Senate or not, I don’t know. I think we have a better shot frankly in the House where to the best of my knowledge the overwhelming majority of Democrats are against it,” the Vermont independent said.

“We don’t know how many tea party Republicans will not want to give the president this authority,” said Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat. “You see on some of the negotiations with Iran, they want a heavy amount of oversight they want to watch every move that he makes … if that same group applies that same standard to this trade agreement there may be some backlash with us in the House not having the ability to amend it.”

Ryan, who represents a manufacturing-heavy district in the state’s northeast, is among those vocally opposing the bill. But he said there are still a lot of maybes out there in the caucus.

“They’ve been fairly quiet and I think they want to see how it plays out with fast track and they obviously want to see the agreement too,” he said. “There’s a lot of unknowns out there for a Democrat to get out in front and say I’m definitely voting for this.”

Despite an impressive coalition aimed at defeating the deal, the number of Democrats who support the bill could grow depending on the position of leadership. But so far, there is little indication that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi or Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer will support the legislation.

Pelosi has offered a consistent message that Democrats want a “path to yes.” She has even organized a series of briefings on the Asia-Pacific trade deal to help members be able to make a more educated decision, but — based on her past record — she is not expected to support a fast-track bill. She took a firm stance against last year’s TPA bill, saying it was “unacceptable.

Hoyer, who has been supportive of past trade deals, struck an unusually cautious tone about the legislation when asked about it earlier this week.

“It’s very controversial over here, as you well know,” he said.

Hoyer didn’t outright oppose a fast track bill last year and said he was “keeping his powder dry” on the issue.

The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Sander Levin, has come out against the bill. Levin has pushed for Congress to resolve outstanding issues in the Asia-Pacific pact before voting to give the president negotiating authority.

The fast-track compromise “gives up Congressional leverage at the exact wrong time,” the Michigan lawmaker said in a statement. “Instead of pressing USTR to get a better agreement or signaling to our negotiating partners that Congress will only accept a strong agreement, the Hatch-Wyden-Ryan TPA puts Congress in the back seat and greases the skids for an up-or-down vote after the fact.”

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