Administration Pushes Forward with TPP Pitch as Critics Dig In for Lasting Fight

In highlights of the data (here), the International Trade Administration said California already exports more than $70 billion of products in 2014 to TPP countries, while Florida exported $314 million in chemical products alone to TPP parties during the same year. Those exports are poised to spike with implementation of the pact, said the officials.

Pritzker also touted critical removals of non-tariff trade barriers in the pact. “TPP will create efficient and transparent customs procedures to make it cheaper, easier and faster to get American-made products to the TPP markets,” she said on the conference call. “The agreement also streamlines complex trade barriers like standards and technical regulations, which often make it very difficult for a small business to access a new market.” The TPP text, which surfaced on Nov. 5, calls for more advance rulings for administrative, legal and regulatory changes, improved guidelines for challenges to unlawful activity, and increased automation, among other measures (see 1511050020).

The pact has hit resistance on Capitol Hill since its release (see 1511060028) and U.S. industry has been cautiously evaluating the terms. Some industry members, including the American Soybean Association, have, however, delivered explicit support. “We back it and we will push Congress to do the same,” said ASA President Wade Cowan in a Nov. 11 statement (here). The sanitary and phytosanitary provisions contained in the TPP will help eliminate many of the non-scientific barriers to market entry that hang us up in particular markets, and the biotechnology provisions in the agreement will help to ensure that from export partner to export partner, science is the common framework on which our soybean technology is regulated.” Cowan also pointed to slashed tariffs in the pact as a boon to the U.S. soybean industry.

The Obama administration will continue to press support for TPP in the coming weeks and months, particularly with small business owners, said Froman on the press call. He also pledged to move an implementation bill to Congress as quickly as possible. "We’re doing everything within our domain to move the process forward. Finishing the negotiations … completing the text … publishing the text … triggering the 90-day notification,” he said. “We’re going to continue to make progress along the process laid out by TPA and then consult with Congress and congressional leadership on what the most appropriate time is for a vote.”

But the deal is facing staunch opposition from many advocacy groups, particularly labor and environmental organizations. Leaders from those organizations lashed into the pact in recent days as failing to include concrete mandates for TPP parties to reform labor and environmental laws.

United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, a long-time critic of the pact, said during a Nov. 10 conference call that auto and auto part rules of origin language (here) in the text will put U.S. industry at a severe disadvantage. TPP auto rules require between 30-45 percent of materials to originate in TPP countries depending on value calculations, he said, while also criticizing the pact’s lack of enforceable currency rules and the investor-state dispute settlement. “This is like a dagger in the heart of American manufacturing,” he said. “There’s no member of Congress that should feel safe voting for this." Gerard and other labor leaders on the call derided the lack of labor reform mandates for Mexico in Peru in the pact, dismissing administration suggestions that they are continuing to work out a parallel labor deal for Mexico. “In some ways, it’s rather insulting … the fact that they tell us that they’re still working,” Gerard said.

The TPP pact repeats failed labor provisions of past agreements, said Gerard and AFL-CIO trade expert Celeste Drake. Both mentioned the Central American Free Trade Agreement labor dispute with Guatemala which continues despite years of litigation (see 1502060019). TPP labor provisions are “are just a list of Ways that Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam need to act to bring their laws into basic compliance,” said Drake. “They contain nothing on measuring implementation of those legal changes or enforcement of those legal changes.” The TPP labor chapter (here) pushes parties to crack down on forced labor and boost collective bargaining rights, among a range of other terms.

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune acknowledged that the TPP text likely contains more “references and language” on conservation than any other U.S. free trade agreement, but Brune railed against a lack of enforceability. “We have concluded that many provisions are toothless. They are weak. They don’t do what they profess to do,” said Brune. “A trade deal that protects our wildlife and the environment would actually require countries to change their ways. And the TPP doesn’t do that.” Wildlife poaching and illegal timber trade are poised to continue unabated under the pact, he said.