Progressives claim limited victory as trade pact supporters stall for time

Just days after a sizable number of House Democrats rejected President Barack Obama’s plans for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supporters of the trade deal opted Tuesday for more breathing space — pushing a second vote on the matter forward up to six weeks in a tacit acknowledgment of the difficulty they face attracting sufficient backing.

In a major blow Friday to the administration’s ambitions for the 12-country agreement, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led a Democratic mutiny, stopping fast-track authority for the president — which would have allowed him to submit trade agreements for a simple up-or-down vote in Congress — by means of a vote against the linked trade adjustment assistance, a measure that Democrats generally support but jettisoned in a bid to defeat TPP fast-tracking.

Republican leaders, who have been the president's strongest allies on trade of late, had originally planned to hold a revote early this week. But mindful of the unlikeliness of swinging around dozens of the 144 Democratic members that shot the measure down just days earlier, the House instead voted Tuesday to extend the deadline to pass the trade measures to July 31 — the last working day for members of Congress before they leave for the August recess.

The move leaves more time for supporters to plead their case and there may be more procedural wrangling ahead as the trade bill’s Democratic and Republican proponents try to outmaneuver its opponents. But pushing the deadline back can be taken as a clear nod that the road ahead for the TPP is difficult, and opposition sizable.

Progressive groups, led by labor unions, have mounted an aggressive campaign in recent months to reject fast-tracking, which is viewed as critical in passing the 12-country Pacific trade pact.

Supporters of the transnational deal say it would be a net positive for participating countries and would give the United States economic leverage over China in the Pacific region.

But opponents see the trade deal, large portions of which remain classified, as little more than a corporate give-away that would encourage multinationals to eliminate U.S. jobs and undercut environmental, consumer and labor regulations. Those groups have long said their objective was to slow down the progress of fast-track legislation and force U.S. trade negotiators to rethink key provisions of the TPP.

Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, said it would take substantial changes to the trade legislation in the next eight weeks to convince the Democratic base that their concerns with the final deal would be addressed and to salvage the situation. Lee said one option would be to take up Michigan Rep. Sander Levin’s “right-track” trade bill instead, which imposes specific negotiating instructions to the administration in disputed areas and ensures stronger congressional oversight over the final deal.   

“It’s hard to see. The changes we’re looking for go deep,” Lee said. “We would hope that there will be a deep rethinking here. It’s a wake-up call to the administration that they’re on the wrong path, that this is deeply unpopular. We hope that they won’t make a few little tweaks and cosmetic changes around the edges and try to shove it down people’s throats.”  

Democrats may also try to extract other policy concession from Republicans before they consider trade legislation again. Pelosi noted that the chances of a legislative compromise on trade would be improved if there were a long-term solution on transportation funding.

"The prospects for passage of such a bill will greatly increase with the passage of a robust highway bill," Pelosi told reporters last week.

Others said it was time for Congress to finally take up priorities that would benefit workers and focus on creating jobs and boosting wages.

“I don’t think it’s so much a quid pro quo, it’s a more a sense that if we have a do-over, what should we focus on first?” Lee said. “Let’s do things that we know are going to be good for the economy, like infrastructure, that start to really bring the economy back to where it is before the recession.”

Progressive groups said that in an era where they’ve had little luck in pushing back against business interests, their success in getting members of his own party to buck Obama’s trade agenda — at least for the time being — was a significant victory. 

“The last couple of years, if not decade, has been really difficult fighting corporate interests in D.C.,” said Shane Larson, the legislative director of the Communications Workers of America. “It demonstrated to us what we’ve known all along — when you have a broad based coalition of progressive activists coming together to fight a common enemy, we can still win and really flip conventional wisdom on its head. Remember what the press was reporting after the November elections? The Beltway blatherers were talking about how trade was going to be the one thing where Democrats and Republicans were going to come together and there was going to be this big ‘Kumbaya’ moment.”

Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University, said what has unfolded in Congress over the last few weeks may signal a rising awareness of economic inequality and the role that trade policy may have in perpetuating it. In years past, a portion of the Democratic Party could be relied upon to give support to Republicans in passing trade deals — that is no longer the case. 

“I think this is a country where people don’t want to see the little person being trampled, and I think there’s a growing sentiment about the prevalence of inequality and the surging growth of inequality,” he said. “It lays the groundwork for a possible shift in public mood and public policy.”

McCartin said it was also a reinvigorating moment for the labor movement.   

“The labor movement even before this vote had significant clout within the Democratic Party except on some issues and one of them was trade,” he said. “I think that what this does is remind Democrats that the labor movement is still a significant force, and I think it really energizes people in the labor movement to believe that they can influence the debate even though they’ve taken a lot of hits in the last couple of years.”