While President Obama is busy trying to shore up fraying factions within his own party over granting him new powers to negotiate a massive Asian trade deal, he still needs to keep an eye on his right flank.
It’s too early to tell whether enough liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans could threaten Obama’s upcoming trade plans, but the president can’t take broad House Republican support for granted, conservative activists warn.
Libertarian and business-oriented Republicans are generally supportive of trade deals but some on the right are rethinking the idea of granting Obama any newfound powers after years of watching what they regard as executive branch power grabs on everything from immigration to nuclear negotiations with Iran.
The latest presidential push to win fast-track trade promotion authority to cut a major trade deal with 11 Asian countries is a bridge too far, several conservative groups argue.
Senate Republican leaders are in the rare position of touting the same talking points as Obama when it comes to the upcoming trade measures.
“Trade is good for America,” Senate Republicans said in a Wednesday release quoting President Reagan saying that “the freer the flow of World Trade, the Stronger the Tides for Human Progress.”
But Richard Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, said Senate Republicans are missing the point.
“Trade itself is neither good nor bad — it’s normal,” he said. “The conditions of trade are what’s in dispute. Granting the president fast track trade authority isn’t about trade. It’s about Obama’s stated desire to re-write the economic rules of the world.”
Treaties require two-thirds Senate ratification for a reason: because they change all the laws and regulations already in place that contradict them, he said.
“Making it easy for President Obama to push through the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] without full Constitutional Senate scrutiny is a dereliction of the Senate’s duty and in no way reflects constitutional conservatism,” he added.
Several conservative groups, including Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots, are opposed to giving Obama fast-track authority for a variety of reasons. Numbers USA, a group that opposes illegal immigration and advocates limited legal immigration, is concerned about reports of immigration and guest worker provisions in the deal. The Center for Security Policy expresses similar concerns.
Heritage Action, which generally supports free trade, privately took exception to GOP concessions aimed at making the deal more attractive for Democrats, including expanding aid for workers whose jobs are displaced by global trade to service workers as well as manufacturing workers, according to sources familiar with the issue.
Just how many conservative House and Senate GOP votes the groups can siphon off is unclear but opponents cite “a huge amount of discontent” among House conservatives that Republican leadership and Obama must overcome.
Obama meanwhile spent part of Tuesday trying to bridge the differences within his own party on the issue, but the effort may have backfired when he specifically called out Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as “wrong” on the issue.
The president traveled to suburban Northern Virginia Tuesday for a townhall-style discussion with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and local small business owners.
But first the president sat down with MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews who asked him why Democrats like Warren and other critics were “out there” opposing fast-track and saying the TPP would benefit the rich and leave average Americans behind.
“I love Elizabeth. We’re allies on a whole host of issues, but she’s wrong on this,” Obama told Matthews.
“Everything I do has been focused on how do we make sure the middle class is getting a fair deal,” he said. “Now I would not be doing this trade deal if I did not think it was good for the middle class. And when you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts they are wrong.”
But Warren has plenty of company in her opposition. Michigan’s Rep. Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, last week said White House negotiators had squandered an opportunity for a more bipartisan fast-track deal and argued that Democrats are “overwhelmingly” opposed to it.
“I’m out to defeat the Hatch-Wyden bill,” Levin told reporters.
Those supporting the deal say that Levin made his opposition to granting the president trade-promotion authority clear early on, and that the real lynchpin in determining the level of House Democratic support will be Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s views.
“She’s made noises that make it sound like she’s gettable — a little bit to my surprise…,” said Tim Keeler, who served as chief of staff in the U.S. Trade Representative’s office during the Bush administration and is now an attorney at Mayer Brown. “That sends a signal to members of the Democratic caucus that she’s not going to punish them if they support the president on this.”
Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, negotiated the deal with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who chairs the House Ways and means Committee.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday, continued to defend the deal as “the most far-reaching, progressive trade-promotion authority measure” Congress has ever produced and argued that doing nothing would cede fertile economic ground to China, which would most likely set much lower standards than those the United States is seeking.
He also suggested there is still room for some changes to the TPP deal, noting that “we don’t have a final agreement yet.”
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, Earnest said, has been “tirelessly” engaged in the effort to try to negotiate this agreement and is currently in Japan working on the details. Obama also plans to focus on any outstanding issues when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits the White House Tuesday.
The next day Abe will address a joint meeting of Congress. He will be the first Japanese leader to do so.
