House Dem Levin to Inspect TPP Progress at Sydney Summit
House Ways and Means ranking member Sandy Levin, D-Mich., will evaluate the state-of-play in Trans-Pacific Partnership talks firsthand at the upcoming TPP summit in Sydney, Australia, his office said. From Oct. 25-27, Levin will meet with TPP trade ministers and…
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sit in on briefings, said an Oct. 21 statement. “There are many outstanding issues within the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and Congressman Levin wants to see their status firsthand," said a spokesman in the statement. Levin is a long-time critic of U.S. trade policy, and often pushes for more worker protections in U.S. trade agreements. He spelled out a range of demands for TPP in a report released in late September, including sweeping structural reform of Vietnamese labor rights (see 14091914). Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., along with Senate Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and former chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in January, but Levin declined to endorse the bill (see 14091914). Passage of TPA is widely seen as necessary to pass TPP implementation legislation.