Sen. Sherrod Brown is the type of lawmaker one might expect to be leading the charge to give Congress more power over international trade policy. He’s a staunch liberal who believes that past deals have undercut U.S. workers and has been at the forefront of fights to stop them.
Just three years ago, the Ohio Democrat opposed the extension of Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “fast track,” the law that makes it easier for the White House to get trade deals through Congress — even when the president asking for it was Barack Obama. He and other prominent Democrats fought TPA’s eventual renewal to the bitter end.
“With fast track it is more critical than ever that we protect Congress’ prerogative to have a say on a deal,” he said in a June 2015 Senate floor speech.
He isn’t fighting TPA’s renewal this year, however. In fact, he says he is willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt.
“While Sen. Brown opposes fast track, he supports the work the administration is doing to renegotiate NAFTA and address China’s cheating on steel. He is working closely with [U.S. Trade Representative Robert] Lighthizer on these issues and others, and that is his primary focus right now. Sen. Brown has told the president that if the administration negotiates a new NAFTA that is right for workers, he will vote for it and help to deliver other Democratic votes. And Sen. Brown is working closely with Ambassador Lighthizer to help achieve that goal,” Brown’s office told the Washington Examiner.
That stance points to one of the unheralded successes of Trump’s administration: He has created a broadly bipartisan trade policy that has reinvigorated the White House’s ability to pursue deals.
The administration’s trade policy isn’t universally celebrated. All sides can point to something the White House is doing that they don’t like. But they can point to enough that they do like to take a wait-and-see attitude.
For example, on July 1, Trump will quietly rack up a major victory with the renewal for three years of Trade Promotion Authority.
The law is officially named the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act but is more commonly known as “fast track.” It has been a hugely debated issue for years because it hobbles Congress’ ability to weigh in on trade issues. The law limits lawmakers to a single up or down vote on any international deal that the president sends over, prohibiting them from amending it or tweaking the agreement in any way.
The law has existed with some modifications since 1974 and has long been seen as essential to the White House’s ability to reach deals since it allows negotiators to assure their trade counterparts that any agreement that they strike won’t be picked apart by Congress.
The law will renew automatically for another three years starting in July, meaning Trump will have the authority for the rest of his current term. The renewal is based on a formal request the administration made to Congress in March. Members of Congress can object to its renewal, but no effort, even a symbolic one, has been mounted or even threatened.
Lawmakers ranging from free-trade Republicans who hate Trump’s tariffs to Democrats who want to impeach him all had the opportunity to object to and at least stall TPA’s renewal. If a “resolution of disapproval” passed either branch of Congress, that would kill TPA. But no one in either chamber has decided to try, congressional staffers tell the Washington Examiner.
“We haven’t heard any noises from the Senate to disapprove, so it doesn’t look like it’ll happen,” said a staffer for one prominent Democrat who requested anonymity.
Todd Tucker, trade policy fellow for the Roosevelt Institute, says the administration has been extraordinarily successful at tamping down opposition.
“If anybody would make a move, it would be somebody like Sherrod Brown. But Lighthizer has said he wants substantially more Democratic support, and he has been very smart about keeping these lines of communication open,” Tucker said.
A White House source who requested anonymity stressed that the administration didn’t try to sneak the renewal past Congress, noting the request for the extension was made March 21 and publicly announced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, at a congressional hearing.
“I strongly support the president’s request for TPA renewal, which he submitted to Congress yesterday, and I’m glad to see that he intends to use TPA to negotiate new agreements consistent with congressional objectives,” Brady said.
The White House source said the administration expected a bunch of inquiries from lawmakers about TPA, but they never came. There have been no signs of anything other than auto-renewal, the source indicated.
That’s a stark contrast from the recent past. Congress has often been loathe to renew the authority because lawmakers don’t want to give the White House that much latitude.
Previous administrations saw oddball coalitions emerge involving lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Administrations initially discounted the groups on the belief that the congressional leadership and committee chairmen were the only lawmakers who mattered, but the opposition would grow steadily, drawing support from both sides of the aisle.
The law expired in 1994 during President Bill Clinton’s administration, partly because he couldn’t tamp down anti-trade sentiment in his own party. “We have an uphill fight in rounding up Democrats in the House,” then-White House spokesman Mike McCurry told Reuters in 1997. The Republican majority, despite backing TPA in theory, was in no hurry to rally to Clinton’s side, either.
TPA wasn’t renewed again until President George W. Bush rallied GOP support for it 2002, following a narrow 215-212 vote in the House and 64-34 vote in the Senate.
The authority expired again in 2007, and Obama attempted to revive it beginning in 2012. It took three years of prodding before Congress would agree, with some Republicans revolting against their congressional leadership, which favored renewal, and many Democrats opposing their own president.
“In light of the broad scope of today’s trade agreements, it is even more vital that Congress have a fulsome role in shaping these pacts’ terms. Given our concerns, we will oppose ‘fast track’ Trade Promotion Authority or any other mechanism delegating Congress’ constitutional authority,” 151 House Democrats told Obama in a 2013 letter.
The White House regained the authority two years later after a 62-38 vote in the Senate and a 218-208 vote in the House. The fight was so prolonged that it effectively undermined the White House’s effort to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal that had been the main reason why the Obama administration wanted fast track.
Trump has headed off any such rebellion partly by taking the public stance that he may not want or need any new trade deals. He railed against North American Free Trade Agreement and TPP throughout the presidential election and formally killed U.S. participation in the Pacific Rim deal as one of his first acts in office. Yet each time he has gone to the precipice, he has pulled back and signaled a willingness to deal.
An initial threat in 2017 to pull out of NAFTA was used as leverage to get Canada and Mexico to agree to renegotiate it. The move split business groups: Large umbrella organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce didn’t want to rock the boat, seeing NAFTA as a long-running success. Others others saw opportunities.
“All factions have an interest in giving him the space to negotiate,” Tucker noted.
Manufacturers were eager to renegotiate the terms on issues such as intellectual property protections. Agriculture was wary but enticed by the opportunity to limit exceptions to NAFTA that benefited Canada’s dairy and poultry industries. No one on the pro-trade side has wanted to hobble Trump’s ability to get any eventual deal through Congress, even the groups opposed to measures such as the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs.
At the same time, the administration built support on the Left by using the NAFTA talks to find common ground with organized labor and its Democrat allies. Lighthizer has used the talks to pressure Mexico into increasing wages for its factory workers and thus limiting the country’s competitive advantage on labor costs. Unions also have applauded the steel tariffs and the push to rewrite the rules of origin for when automobiles can be declared made in America.
“Can you name a constituency that agrees with your position on rules of origin?” Rep. Darrin LaHood, R-Ill., asked Lighthizer during a March House Ways and Means hearing, before ticking off the business groups that didn’t, such as the Chamber.
“How about the AFL-CIO? Do they count?” Lighthizer shot back.
With talks continuing but unlikely to be concluded this year, the hope for a better deal still exists. If a new NAFTA deal is reached, getting it through Congress probably will be a struggle, but Trump is unlikely to see the kind of knee-jerk opposition that previous administrations have faced.
Call it the art of the trade deal.
