It is said that a week is a long time in politics.  So is a day.  Mr. Ikenson spoke to GBD on the morning of January 29th.    That afternoon, the Senate Majority Leader, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), made it very clear that he is not interested in moving TPA legislation any time soon, and things have gone down-hill from there.  Yesterday (February 12), the Minority Leader of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), was even more emphatic in rejecting a TPA bill than Senator Reid had been.  "No on fast track ... out of the question," she said, addressing a gathering of the United Steel Workers and the Blue-Green Alliance.   As for the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), he's keeping his powder dry, saying he's "got some listening to do."

We are not quite sure what originally prompted this quote from Winston Churchill, but in a way it fits in this current American trade setting:

We think that the TPP and TTIP negotiations will lead to success, and possibly it will be a success for which some form of TPA has paved the way.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that we have no idea how many failures will have to be endured first.  To say the least, the next couple of years are likely to be very difficult.  And, although new issues may arise in the meantime, many of the issues Mr. Ikenson raised are at the top of today's to-do pile.  In closing out this entry, we would like to separate two that he put together in his final "flame-throwing" comment on investor-state and TPA.

Taking Investment Out of TPA.  Mr. Ikenson may be on to something here.  As for the essential nature of investor-state dispute systems, we tend to see them in a positive light.  If countries and their citizens benefit from investments, then providing solid legal frameworks for those investments is a good thing.  As for the notion that it is unduly burdensome for national governments to have to defend their actions against companies in court or in international tribunals, frankly, we find it ludicrous.

It is, nevertheless, undeniable that opponents of trade agreements have had great success with their arguments to the effect that the investment provisions of those agreements are sops to industry that threaten national sovereignty.  They cut their teeth in killing the OECD Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the late 1990s, and the same arguments are now being used against TPP and TTIP.  The European Union's recent decision to halt the investment portion of the TTIP negotiations highlights the issue as nothing else could.  And, if there is anything that is certain in any aspect of public policy, it is that the rhetoric surrounding this issue will get even hotter next month when the EU releases the draft text of the TTIP investment chapter.

As it happens, the EU and its Member States already have some 1,400 bilateral investment agreements with investor-state provisions.  The U.S. too has other options.  So in urging the drafters of the TPA bill to drop the investment provisions, Mr. Ikenson may be on to something. 

On Tobacco.  And he may be right too in suggesting that TPA's supporters will be better off if they are not saddled with the tobacco debate - specifically, the possible outcomes to the challenges to Australia plain packaging law.   We will not go into the details here.  Suffice it to say that the law has been in effect since December 2012, and it is being challenged both in the WTO and in an investment tribunal.  The three things that concern us about the issue are:

First, a principle.   Plain packaging legislation is now being considered in New Zealand, and the leader of the country's small ACT party, John Banks, expressed it when he said, "I don't believe the state should seize property rights from legitimate companies selling legitimate products."  His reference, of course, is to the trademarks of the tobacco companies.  The statement takes on more meaning when you consider that countries frequently ban harmful products, and they have not chosen to do so with tobacco.

Second, tobacco is a pariah.  It isn't good for you, and non-tobacco firms want to stay as far away from it as possible.  But public moods are fickle, more fickle than long-term investment decisions.  Just maybe Mr. Banks' focus on "legitimate companies selling legitimate products" is the right one. 

Third, a false choice.  The plain packaging controversy highlights another idea that perhaps should not be ignored.  Much of the rhetoric suggests that the tobacco companies are wrong to defend their interests legally.   The larger point of that same rhetoric is this: where systems, investor-state, allow for compensation to firms, governments cannot exercise their regulatory will.  In our view, that is a false notion and should be challenged.  Though not, perhaps, in the context of a debate over trade promotion authority.