Early on Friday the United States House of Representatives voted for the second time in the space of a week to give President Barack Obama the authority to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the Congress which is seen as vital to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiation to a close after nearly six years.
But in a quirk of the US system the bill giving Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) heads back to the Senate to be voted on again despite a version having already passed in the upper chamber last month.
The reprise of last month’s Senate vote came about because of the House’s failure to pass a Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill funding retraining for American workers out of jobs because of previous trade deals, which needed to pass in both houses before TPA could be sent to Obama to sign into law.
Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the International Business Forum, which represents large-scale exporters including Fonterra, Zespri and ANZCO, said TPA could be voted on again as early as next week but whether it would get enough votes to pass the Senate without the jobs assistance package many Democrats see as a vital pay-off for their support for the trade authority legislation was uncertain.
“It is finely balanced again. We face another difficult set of circumstances next week.”
Dairy Companies Association chairman and Fonterra director Malcolm Bailey said without TPA the eleven countries negotiating the TPP with the US remained reluctant to bring the talks to a close for fear of any deal being dismantled by Congress.
He said passing TPA would restrict Congress to a yes-or-no vote on the TPP and was vital to the dairy industry achieving its aims of tariff elimination in the talks.
“The key countries around our concerns are not going to get serious about their offers until such time that they know that TPA is in place.”
Controversy surrounding the TPP in Canada and Japan and what it would mean for local farmers has meant its governments have been holding off on their best offers on agricultural tariffs and needlessly riling their own domestic farming lobbies until Obama had authority to negotiate trade deals through the TPA.
A 2011 declaration by TPP leaders in Honolulu said the talks aimed to eliminate “within meaningful timeframes” all tariffs and barriers to investment between participating countries.
A study by the Washington DC think-tank The Peterson Institute a year later said such an outcome would boost NZ exports by $4.7 billion by 2025.
