Senate Democrats Block Progress on Obama’s Trade Authority
2015/5/19 16:53:08 Source：The New York Times
WASHINGTON —Senate Democrats handed President Obama a stinging rebuke on Tuesday, blocking consideration of legislation granting their own president accelerated power to complete a major trade accord with Asia.
The Senate voted 52-45 on a procedural motion to begin debating the bill to give the president “trade promotion authority,” eight votes short of the 60 needed to proceed. Republicans and pro-trade Democrats said they would try to negotiate a trade package that could clear that threshold.
But the vote Tuesday presented Mr. Obama what might be a no-win situation. He may have to accept trade enforcement provisions he does not want in order to propel the trade legislation through the Senate, but those same provisions might doom the Pacific trade negotiations that legislation is supposed to lift.
That is especially true for a measure demanding a crackdown on currency manipulation, which is strongly opposed by Japan and Malaysia, two of the 12 nations trying to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest trade accord in a generation.
“It creates a whole new monster set of arguments and debates that we don’t need,” Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the main author of the trade bill, said of the currency language.
“I offered to have them bring up a bill later, do everything I can to give that a fair hearing because I have concerns sometimes too. But on this bill we just can’t have it on there.”
Tuesday’s vote scrambled partisan alliances that have dominated Congress in the Obama era. Democrats, opposing their own president, united around demands that trade promotion authority be paired with a series of other measures, not only to crack down on currency manipulation, but to assist workers displaced by globalization, tighten child labor law and fortify the government’s response to unfair trade practices.
Eight pro-trade Senate Democrats emerged from a strategy meeting at 1 to declare their opposition to the motion to take up the bill.
“This is a group that is thoroughly committed to getting this bill passed,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee. But, he criticized “a lack of a commitment to trade enforcement.”
Republicans were equally adamant that accelerated authority not be saddled with many of those demands. Republicans did say they will link trade promotion authority with an expansion of trade adjustment assistance — aid to workers who lose their jobs because of international competition.
But Republican leaders said they would go no further, at least at the outset, although Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, promised Democrats the chance to amend the legislation.
“This is not a game. This is about trying to accomplish something important for the country that happens to be the president’s No. 1 domestic priority,” Mr. McConnell said.
For Mr. Obama, the Democratic filibuster was a troubling defeat, after suffering through such tactics so many times at the hands of Republicans. Republican leaders placed the defeat at the president’s feet.
“Ultimately it’s up to the president,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican. “Does the president of the United States have enough clout with members of his own political party?”
At the heart of Democrats’ demands is a measure that would force the government to respond when trading partners artificially depress the value of their currency to make their exports cheaper and United States exports more expensive.
Armed with trade promotion authority, Mr. Obama could complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, stretching from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia, knowing that Congress could still kill a final agreement but could not amend or filibuster it. White House officials have said the Pacific trade accord cannot be completed without that authority.
But if Democrats successfully force Mr. McConnell to include that currency measure in the trade promotion bill, the negotiations could collapse.
“I’m strongly against it,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
The way forward is likely to be a negotiated package of trade-enforcement amendments that would be guaranteed a vote, Republican leadership aides said. Before talks collapsed Tuesday morning, talks on that amendment had begun, with Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, offering to drop the currency measure in exchange for a promised vote later this Congress.
But Mr. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said it was not at all clear the pro-trade forces could resurrect the legislation.
“I don’t know where this goes,” he said.
