News: TPP opponents tout deal's defeat, urge Trump to pick USTR in favor of new trade policy
Inside U.S. Trade: TPP opponents tout deal's defeat, urge Trump to pick USTR in favor of new trade policy
By Jenny Leonard
Posted November 16, 2016
Trans-Pacific Partnership opponents this week publicly declared the deal dead and claimed they had the votes to bring it down even if it had come up in the lameduck session – though they did not rule out the possibility that Presidentelect Trump could take up the agreement in the future.
A group of lawmakers, led at a Nov. 15 rally by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT),not only touted its work on TPP but also pledged to “keep up the pressure” on the new administration to take a different approach to negotiating free trade agreements.
DeLauro – saying TPP was “on the ropes long before [Election Day]” but adding that “if it had been brought to a vote in the lameduck it would have failed” – said the coalition will remain united in its effort to deliver a 21st century approach to trade policy, which she said should include enforceable currency disciplines, enforceable environmental and labor standards, clear rules of origin and appropriate trade partners selected on the basis of their records of compliance.
“Trade agreements should reflect the new era of U.S. trade policy with the input from civil society and policymakers and the elimination of fasttrack,” DeLauro said. “Implementing a new model will not be easy, but our next administration needs to do exactly that.”
“PresidentelectTrump made strong comments about trade, but no one knows what he will actually do,” she added. “We're gonna hold him accountable. We're gonna watch closely to see who he chooses to lead the USTR. Will Wall Street have a voice or will the people have a voice?”
But Ways & Means Committee member Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) while calling the rally TPP's “burial ceremony” in a time where “there hasn't been much to celebrate” held open the possibility that Trump could revive the deal in an altered form.
“TPP in its current form is dead,” he said, “and the only question is will it come back in some zombie trade agreement to stalk us next year?”
On the sidelines of the rally, Doggett told Inside U.S. Trade that because much about Trump's plans on trade policy is unknown, predicting what he will do on TPP and other trade deals is hard but he stressed the importance of who is picked to be the next U.S. Trade Representative.
“It is very difficult to tell which way Presidentelect Trump is heading on any number of issues,” Doggett said. “I just think that in order to deliver anything on trade other than more broad comments of sympathy it is a matter of him having a trade ambassador who takes a new approach, who does clean house at USTR, brings in some new people, and secondly who is committed to opening this process significantly so that everything is not hidden.”
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) urged the presidentelect to follow through on his campaign promises for the U.S. working class, calling those voters' frustration with existing trade deals “the major issue” that ensured his success among that group.
“We the American people will be watching: Presidentelect Trump had better listen to what the American people said,” DeFazio said. “This was a major, if not the major, issue in this campaign in my opinion that turned the working class toward Trump: their desperation. He's gonna have to deliver. He can't be business as usual.”
DeLauro offered a similar sentiment, calling it an “open question” whether Trump's message resonated so well with the working class in key states because the Obama administration pushed so hard for TPP.
“The administration's aggressive role in pushing TPP during this entire election cycle, with cabinet people all over the country, with the USTR everywhere, with all kinds of statements in any and all forums, I think it is an open question as to whether or not that allowed Donald Trump to have the issue that cost us the Rust Belt states,” DeLauro said.
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach agreed with the idea that Trump's victory could be linked to the administration's efforts to pass TPP in the lameduck session, but claimed that Trump – despite his adamant opposition to the deal – was not the reason the agreement has been defeated.
“The unremitting push by the Obama administration for the TPP right through this election helped to elect Donald Trump, but Trump has not derailed the TPP – people power united across borders did that,” Wallach said in a Nov. 15 statement. “Six years of relentless, strategic campaigning by an international movement of people from the TPP countries united across borders to fight against corporate power is why the TPP is all but dead.”
Asked whether she is confident TPP will not be revived in a new administration as part of a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement – which is how the Obama administration has often tried to sell the deal because it includes both Mexico and Canada – DeLauro said even with “tweaks” that might satisfy Trump, the deal would face opposition.
“They may try to have that conversation,” she said, “but I believe that all sectors, the environmentalists as well, would just stand up and say no. No matter what kind of tweaking one can do, this is over.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), echoing DeLauro's sentiments, added that “the idea that we would enter into a free trade agreement with Vietnam as a mechanism for finetuning or renegotiating our trade deal with Canada and Mexico is just absurd.”
“What we're promised with Vietnam is that we're gonna have free access to their markets,” he added. “Vietnam has no freedom, Vietnam has no markets. Their tariffs are money paid by stateowned enterprises.”
Doggett told Inside U.S. Trade that a slightly altered TPP would not be sufficient to address Trump's problems with the deal.
“I don't think that a mere tweak will solve the problems there,” Doggett said. “He didn't suggest 'let's just tweak it a little bit and we'll make it better.' No, he was declaring it to be such a bad deal and one of the few specifics he had was about currency manipulation.”
“But if he wants to engage all of us in that discussion I do think it's the basis for some bipartisan action. But he's going to have to quell the urge of Speaker Ryan who sponsored the fasttrack proposal, and folks who don't care about these other issues, who measure success in trade only by the volume of commerce,” Doggett added.
Food safety advocates joined lawmakers in touting TPP's defeat but made clear that while “the deal appears dead” it could be considered by the new Congress or the Trump administration.
“We will remain vigilant to ensure that the corporate lobbyists that support the deal do not make one last try to pass it during the remainder of the lameduck congressional session or in the next Congress,” Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said in a Nov. 15 statement. “The lobbyists who are streaming into the Trump administration supported the TPP and the corporate trade model. We will reject the same corporate trade model masquerading as new trade policy under the next administration.”
Asked whether trade policy in the next Congress and under the new administration would be a bipartisan effort, DeLauro said yes, but also made clear that the Democrats in the House “were never divided on this issue.”
“We have 28 people who voted for fasttrack but that 160 [House Democrats who voted against it] never moved,” she said.
As to how the coalition would address a potential revival of TPP under President Trump given his ties to establishment Republicans through his vice presidential pick, Mike Pence, and business leaders who might push for the agreement to be reconsidered, DeLauro touted the coalition's vigilance and persistence – and noted that its members have been opposed to the deal since negotiations began six years ago.
“We are not going away I think that has been established,” DeLauro said, adding that the effort to defeat the agreement began in 2010. “Why do you think we're just gonna wash our hands and move to the sidelines? It's not going to happen.”
“And none of us think that Wall Street is going away, none of us think that the Chamber of Commerce is going away,” Sherman said. “No, we're not going away.”