Last week, Democrats ditched President Barack Obama on trade policy.
This week, he’s ditching them back, working with Republican leaders and a couple dozen moderate Democrats to pass fast-track trade authority for a massive Pacific nation trade deal that could have a multi-billion dollar impact on Georgia’s economy.
Thursday's maneuver pushed fast-track forward without the assistance for displaced workers that Democrats blocked last week in the hopes of sinking the whole deal.
The House passed Trade Promotion Authority, 218-208, with all but two Georgia Republicans on board and all of Georgia's Democrats opposed.
“It doesn’t happen often, but the president’s right on free trade,” said Rep. Rob Woodall, a Lawrenceville Republican.
“We should be negotiating agreements. I do think he has more pull in the Senate than he has in the House, and so we will be able to get a bill to his desk that he will be able to sign. And we will be able to get on about the business of seeing what a trade agreement looks like and whether we’re going to vote it up or down.”
TPA would give the president fast-track authority to negotiate a 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, allowing Congress the opportunity to vote to approve it but not amend it.
The Obama administration has said other nations won’t sign on to a trade deal that could be amended later. Democrats bucked Obama’s wishes to oppose any bills related to the deal, which labor unions have lobbied aggressively against.
The path forward is murky in the Senate, where Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers was a price for some Senate Democrats’ support to clear a 60-vote procedural hurdle in the first go-round. Still, leaders in both chambers expressed optimism that it would get done after extensive talks this week.
House Speaker John Boehner said the Senate will also consider a separate bill that will include trade assistance along with a less-controversial trade measure dealing with Africa. That bill will have to go back through the House.
The months-long debate has torn Democrats apart and made unusual bedfellows: Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. have worked together, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. has opposed the president.
House Democrats might have sacrificed some leverage in their efforts to kill fast track, as it moves on without them.
“If I were them, I’d go ahead and pass TAA, because TPA is going to happen,” said Rep. Buddy Carter, a Pooler Republican and member of the House leadership whip team.
“And I understand their motives to begin with — not to pass TAA in order to stop TPA. But that train’s left the station. TPA’s going to pass. And if they want anything out if this, if they want TAA out of it, they better get their stuff together.”
But Atlanta Democratic Rep. John Lewis, an outspoken foe of the trade deal, said he was counting on Senate Democrats to hold firm against TPA so his party could gain more concessions.
“I think it’s sort of fluid,” Lewis said. “People are still talking. And we haven’t reached any consensus of where we’re going, but I think we’re all going to listen.”
With business groups on one side, and labor and environmental groups on the other, the lobbying battle on the Trans-Pacific Partnership — potentially the largest trade deal in history — has gone on for years.
The Business Roundtable calculated that Georgia’s $13.7 billion in exports to the other 11 countries supported 475,900 jobs in 2013. Those numbers could rise if tariffs fall in those countries, which include Japan, Australia, Chile and Vietnam.
Labor and environmental standards in some of those countries have tripped the concern of their respective lobby groups. And many Americans have bad memories of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.
“Look at NAFTA,” said Rep. David Scott, an Atlanta Democrat, in a floor speech Thursday. “Yeah, it created jobs. But where did it create jobs? Mexico.”
The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that Georgia lost 22,200 net jobs because of trade imbalances in the first decade of NAFTA. Public Citizen reported that Georgia lost 161,759 manufacturing jobs — 31 percent of the state’s total — from 1994 to 2014.
Some trade concerns came from conservatives as well. Fifty House Republicans opposed Thursday’s vote, including Reps. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County and Doug Collins of Gainesville.
Westmoreland said he had no substantive problems with the bill, but he did not like Boehner working with moderate House Democrats and Senate leaders to make sure the package can pass the upper chamber.
“I don’t see all these environmental buggers and all this other stuff (that raised concerns on the right), but man you can’t operate like this,” Westmoreland said. “Everything needs to stand on its own legs, and if it passes, it passes.
“And if they want to negotiate with somebody, we’re the majority party over here. … Why do we want to customize everything over here that we do to satisfy Senate Democrats?”
The answer, of course, is that Senate Democrats have enough votes to block bills with a filibuster.
Replied Westmoreland: “That ain’t my problem.”
About the Author
