President Barack Obama shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Obama: China might join trade deal — eventually

China could eventually join the trade pact currently under negotiation with 12 Pacific Rim nations, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

A central part of Obama’s pitch for the trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been that it would prevent China from making the rules in the region. But in an interview set for broadcast Wednesday evening on public radio’s “Marketplace,” Obama said that China is showing interest joining the agreement.


“They’ve already started putting out feelers about the possibilities of them participating at some point,” Obama told host Kai Ryssdal. Those feelers, he added, are being directed “to us, to Jack Lew, the Treasury secretary.”

The administration is trying to round up support ahead of a vote in the House next week on whether to give the president so-called fast-track authority to conclude the final provisions of the deal. Obama and other supporters of the trade deal frequently make the case that a deal is necessary to counter the dominance of Beijing in a set of markets that compose 40 percent of global GDP.

“If we are not there helping to shape the rules of the road, then U.S. businesses and U.S. workers are going to be cut out, because there’s a pretty big country there, called China, that is growing fast, has great gravitational pull and often operates with different sets of rules,” Obama said in the interview.

If the United States can broker a deal with China’s neighbors that includes stronger labor and environmental standards, “then China is going to have to at least take those international norms into account,” he added. “And, we are still pursuing strong bilateral economic relations with China, we still pressure them around issues like currency, or the subsidies that they may be engaged in, or theft of intellectual property. We still directly deal with them on those issues, but it sure helps if they are surrounded with countries that are operating with the same kinds of high standards that, by the way, we already abide by.”

Lew also made reference to conversations with China during an appearance at the London School of Economics last week.

“The interest that we’ve heard from China has evolved over the last few years from a question of somewhat ill-ease at the idea of it to asking questions of what would it take to meet those standards,” he said. As China goes through the process of making economic reforms, Lew continued, “it will be closer to meeting the kinds of standards that TPP would require.”

In addition to the “Marketplace” sitdown, Obama also invited five local news anchors to the White House for some TPP talk on Wednesday, including a briefing on the deal from members of the Cabinet and special tours of the White House in addition to a one-on-one with the president. The stations in Dallas and El Paso, Texas; San Diego and Sacramento, California; and Seattle each serve districts of Democrats who have yet to make a commitment on their vote for fast-track authority.

“I’m pretty confident that we are going to be able to get this done,” Obama told Seattle’s NBC affiliate KING.

The White House’s marathon interviews were held just hours after a coalition of liberal groups delivered 2 million petitions against fast-track authority to the Capitol, with a news conference featuring top liberal opponents like Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent.