New Senate Gives Opportunity for White House on Trade Agreements

Next week, the 114^th Congress will be sworn in and with it many taxpayer and economic possibilities will follow. While  the House of Representatives will see no change in which party controls the chamber, the Senate will see a shift from Democrat control to Republican control. This will be the first time since the end of 2006 that the GOP will run both chambers of Congress and with this new shift in the dynamic of power on Capitol Hill there are going to be opportunities for cooperation with President Obama.  One area that could see mutual agreement and partnership is trade policy, specifically Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).   Opening up trade would be a win-win for taxpayers and the economy.

Agreement on how to proceed with trade policy has been stalled because Senate leaders and the President have been at odds over the direction and language of various trade agreements on the table. Last July it was clear that Democrats controlling the Senate were not in the same mindset as President Obama when it came to TPA and TPP.

The problems weren’t limited to just the Senate and then-Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, but also other members of the President’s own party including Nancy Pelosi in the House, who had vowed to block TPA legislation. Last year, Rep. Pelosi said it was “out of the question.” Not at all coincidentally, TPA is also opposed by Big Labor. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka has been an especially strident critic, who took to Twitter to state that his organization “opposes the TPA legislation in the strongest of terms and will actively work to block its passage.” As union membership – and hence, union dues – continue to decline, labor bosses have reason to fear an expansion of free trade. It only accelerates Big Labor’s inevitable fall into irrelevance. That’s been a long time coming; however, it’s shameful for union bosses like Trumka to put their own interests above those of the American workers whose jobs depend on international trade.

That was what 2014 gave us, but now with 2015 just beginning and a new Congress convening with new leadership in the Senate, the chance to move forward on crucial trade initiatives could be within Washington’s grasp. In The Washington Post last week, David Nakamura detailed this new trade push from the White House and their efforts to work with the business community, Congressional Republicans, and other stakeholders all while fighting key core constituencies of his own party on a very short clock:

President Obama is preparing a major push on a vast free-trade zone that seeks to enlist Republicans as partners and test his premise that Washington can still find common ground on major initiatives.

It also will test his willingness to buck his own party in pursuit of a legacy-burnishing achievement. Already, fellow Democrats are accusing him of abandoning past promises on trade and potentially undermining his domestic priority of reducing income inequality.

The dynamic, as the White House plots strategy for the new year when the GOP has full control of Congress, has scrambled traditional political alliances. In recent weeks, Obama has rallied the business community behind his trade agenda, while leading Capitol Hill progressives, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have raised objections and labor and environmental groups have mounted a public relations campaign against it.

The administration is moving aggressively in hopes of wrapping up negotiations by the middle of next year on a 12-nation free-trade pact in the Asia-Pacific region before the politics become even more daunting ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The question now becomes what the new Senate majority will do in order to move forward on these trade agreements. The country has already seen a decline in exports and there are growing signs that the global economy is being impacted the lack of continuity in trade policy between nations worldwide. Bloomberg gave a sobering assessment on the metrics from the Commerce Department that confirmed the slowdown in exports from the United States last year:

In one of the first signs that a global slowdown will limit how fast the world’s largest economy will grow, the trade deficit in the U.S. widened in September as exports slumped from a record.

The gap grew by 7.6 percent to $43 billion, the biggest since May, from $40 billion in August, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The decrease in international sales was broad-based, with customers in Europe, Latin America and Japan all pulling back.

The economy benefits when trade agreements are made.  Enhanced trade boosts economic clout and enhances the ability of the United States to participate in exporting and importing with partners around the world. Trillions of dollars worth of goods are exported annually and that number can grow and have a larger economic impact if the right choices are made on trade policy. We hope that Congress and the White House will work together to ensure that fair and open trade initiatives are allowed to move forward so that all working Americans can benefit from an expanded playing field in the global economy.