|
As we noted yesterday, Ambassador Froman was the sole witness at Tuesday's Ways and Means Committee hearing on the U.S. Trade Policy Agenda. We also noted that the members of the Committee raised a number of concerns in their long exchange with the U.S. Trade Representative, including the situation at the West Coast ports. If there were two issues that dominated the discussion, however, they were Trade Promotion Authority, which the President requested in his State of the Union address on January 20, and the negotiations for a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which are reportedly close to a conclusion. As Ambassador Froman put it, "The contours of a final agreement are coming into focus."
Our focus today is Trade Promotion Authority. The insight from Ambassador Froman which is today's featured quote was a predicate to a restatement of the President's request. In his next sentence, Ambassador Froman said that "To further strengthen that cooperation [between the Executive and Congress], as the President made clear last week, we look forward to working with Congress to pass a bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority."
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a Republican, is the new chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means. From his opening statement at Tuesday's hearing, it would seem that Ambassador Froman and the Administration are pushing on an open door. Yes, Chairman Ryan is skeptical about granting more power to the current executive. As he put it, "I'd no sooner trust this administration with more power than I'd trust the [New England] Patriots with the footballs at Lambeau [Field]," the home stadium of the Green Bay Packers.
But Chairman Ryan does want to give President Obama Trade Promotion Authority. The core of his argument was this:
"Nothing stops a president from negotiating a deal without instructions from Congress. So, if we waited till after the negotiations are done to make our views known-if we simply reacted to what the administration put in front of us-we might scuttle the whole deal. That means we have to get involved before the deal is done, not after it's finished. We have to be proactive, not reactive.
"That's what TPA does. We call this process 'trade promotion authority.' But I think of it more as a contract. We say to the administration, if you want this up-or-down vote, you have to meet three requirements: Number one, you have to listen to us. Number two, you have to talk to us. And number three, you have to remember: we get the final say."
The view was very different on the Democratic side. Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan is the Ranking Member on Ways and Means, and his priority is emphatically not TPA, at least not now. In his opening statement on Tuesday, Mr. Levin said:
"Congress at this point must not give up its leverage by passing TPA - where it can only say yes or no - until we are fully confident that USTR is on a clear path toward effectively achieving [key] outcomes [in the TPP negotiations]."
Mr. Levin talked about some of those outcomes at the hearing, but his reference point was the statement on TPP objectives which he issued on January 22.
| 
