Former Congressman Names TPA as One of Four Lame-Duck Essentials
Passage of Trade Promotion Authority is one of four key legislative priorities Congress should tackle in the rapidly-approaching lame-duck session of Congress, said former congressman Jim Moran during an Arent Fox and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation panel on Oct. 29 (here). Americans go to the ballot box on Nov. 4, and the lame-duck session will extend through January when the 114th Congress takes its seat. The other priorities include the 12 appropriations measures, defense authorization and immigration reform progress, said Moran.
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The lame-duck session gives a number of lawmakers active in the trade world an opportunity to bolster their legacies, said Miriam Sapiro, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and former negotiator at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., may want to muscle through a TPA bill if voters hand the reins of the Senate to Republicans, and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., likely wants to put a bill into law before retiring at the end of this term, said Sapiro. Camp was one of three lawmakers to introduce a TPA bill in January (see 14011013). In April, Wyden vowed to forge ahead with another TPA measure, but no details have yet to emerge (see 14040919).
None of the panelists suggested TPA is particularly likely to pass during the lame-duck session, but emphasized that the first few months of the next Congress may mark the best window. President Barack Obama needs to drastically increase his influence over the process, however, said Grant Aldonas, former counsel at the Finance Committee and USTR negotiator. “The president has to send the signal, not Congress," said Aldonas. "The president has what he is going to demand will happen and has to happen in a lame-duck session, in terms of giving him the authority. He needs to have that clearly out there so that when he’s in the room with his trading partners.”
Industry representatives and other trade proponents have eyed TPA for more than a year as a vehicle to pass several other trade-related bills, such as renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences and a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill. Democrats will likely push for the inclusion of Trade Adjustment Assistance, but Congress also needs to focus on boosting enforcement efforts to scale back U.S. job losses, said Stephen Ezell, a senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Of the 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost from 2000-2010, the ITIF attributes as much as 40 percent of that to poor enforcement of trade law. “We should increase by at least 20 percent the funding for the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center and we also need to equip USTR with more resources, like an office of globalization that will help them think through some of these globalization and trade issues,” such as subsidized and dumped Chinese solar cells in the U.S. market, said Ezell.
Obama will almost certainly be unable to seal the deal on a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing later this month, said Sapiro. Many lawmakers and observers consider TPA critical to passing a TPP implementation bill or a similar measure for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Ezell cautioned against strict offset language in a TPA bill. “If we pass TPP and TTIP, that will result in a decrease of customs revenues and tariff income for the United States,” said Ezell. “I have heard in some Republican precincts that they may make a part of the negotiating objections that there would have to be pay-fors for any reductions in income received by the government. And I just think that’s a very poor idea. These agreements will expand economic growth in the long-term.”