As the adverb "ultimately" suggests, today's quote is from the conclusion of the TPP speech that Senator Orrin Hatch, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, gave on the floor of the Senate last Thursday. 

The text of the full speech makes it clear that Chairman Hatch is not just concerned about how the full Congress will react to the recently proclaimed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.  He is (or was) not yet certain what his own position will be.  As he explained, "While I've often touted the potential benefits of TPP, I've also been very clear that I won't support just any TPP agreement." 

Senator Hatch's floor statement contained no final assessments because there is still no final text.  He did, however, highlight areas of potential concern, based on the available information, and he set out some broad tests that he believes a supportable agreement must meet. 

Intellectual Property.  The protection of U.S. intellectual property has long been high on Chairman's Hatch's list of priorities, and there have been several exchanges between the Chairman and the U.S. Trade Representative over the years regarding the period of data exclusivity for biologics.  In U.S. law that period of protection is 12 years.  Reportedly it will be considerably less than that under TPP.

We will discuss the details of that issue in a later entry. Here we simply want to note that it is a concern.   Other concerns Senator Hatch mentioned included:

Overreaching labor commitments.  

The Litmus Tests.  The above are issues Senator Hatch flagged for attention.  They are not the tests he set out for the agreement.  As for those tests, there were three of them, namely:

It has to meet the TPA objectives.  "The negotiating objectives we included in our TPA [Trade Promotion Authority] law aren't just pro forma," the Senator said, though he conceded that some compromise in some areas would be necessary.

The Commitment of Trading Partners must be credible.  "I must have confidence," Senator Hatch said, "that our trading partners will actually live up to the commitments they have made."

Congressional Review.  As Senator Hatch put it, "The agreement must be subjected to a thorough and rigorous Congressional Review, including in-depth consultation with the administration."

Whether justified or not, the expressions of frustration over the absence of complete information have come from across the spectrum of interested parties -  from potential TPP supporters and presumptive opponents alike.  Some examples:

From Rep. Paul Ryan (R WI), Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means:

    October 5 Statement

From Jay Timmons, President of the National Association of Manufacturers:

    October 5 Statement

From Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO:

October 14 Letter to President Obama as reported in The Hill on the same day.

We're pretty sure that the lore of first impressions is overstated.  They are not irreversible, and they are not inevitably determinant of final outcomes.  Still, they are important.  Football coaches will tell you that: "Hit 'em hard on the first snap!"  Glamorous movie stars say the same thing: "Begin with wow!"

So it is too bad that TPP - that is, the announcement of an agreement - did not make a better first impression.  It might have.  An Administration that had genuinely taken Congressional leaders into its confidence might have been able to lead off with strong TPP endorsements from the chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees.  But it was not to be.  Instead we have a trade policy drama with re-enacted fragments from Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman's 1967 classic film about life in a Florida prison.

The absolutely unforgettable scene is the one in which, on a bet, Newman's character, Luke, eats 50 hard-boiled eggs.  The look on his face as the last eggs go down is an indescribable mixture of pain and nausea.  For some members of Congress, there are going to be TPP provisions like that, even if they have not yet read them in their final versions.

The absolutely unforgettable line in the movie is  from a different scene.  An angry prison warden or captain, knocks Luke down with a blow and explains: "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

Secrecy was a prominent feature of TPP throughout the long years of negotiations.  And yes, virtually all negotiations require some degree of secrecy.  But they also require cooperation.  Trade negotiations especially require close cooperation between the negotiators, the Administration, and Congress, because any meaningful result must be expressed in law.  In the United States, trade agreements are not self-executing documents.  They are templates for U.S. law or they are nothing.

Judging from first impressions, moving TPP from the October 5 announcement in Atlanta to a public law is going to be very difficult.  Not impossible and not quick, but difficult and slow.  All of that is for next week and beyond.  It's Friday....

A Worried Chairman is ta link to the page on the website of the Senate Finance Committee with the full text of Senator Hatch's floor statement on TPP.

From Chairman Ryan is a link to Chairman Paul Ryan's October 5 statement in response to the announcement that the TPP negotiators had reached a deal.

From the NAM takes you to the October 5 statement on the TPP deal from NAM president Jay Timmons.

A Letter from Labor is a link to the October 14 article in The Hill reporting on Richard Trumka's letter to President Obama urging the immediate release of the TPP text. 

Cool Hand Luke takes you to the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) page devoted to this film