President Obama is getting the same treatment on trade that Capitol Hill Democrats gave President Bush during his years in office, but this time it’s an intra-party feud that could deny the president a top legacy-building priority.
Late in the Bush years when Obama was in the Senate, several major trade agreements stalled when the Democratic Congress allowed the president’s fast-track trade authority to expire.
Back then, Obama never spoke out strongly in favor of renewing Bush’s fast-track authority and had a mixed overall record on supporting free trade deals.
In 2005, for instance, a newly elected Sen. Obama opposed an expansion of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, citing weak labor and environmental standards in the agreement.
But he later voted in favor of a trade treaty with Oman and Peru, arguing then and during his 2008 campaign for president that those deals provided better protections for the consumer, the environment and workers in general and that the North American Free Trade Act and others previously negotiated by both Presidents Clinton and Bush need to be renegotiated to provide stronger protections.
“For America to win, American workers have to win, too. That’s why I opposed NAFTA, it’s why I opposed CAFTA and it’s why I said any agreement I would support had to contain real, enforceable standards for workers,” he said on the 2008 campaign trail.
True to form, when he won the presidency, Obama worked to renegotiate several stalled trade treaties, including a major agreement with South Korea, to include stronger protections for U.S. workers and higher environmental standards.
But Obama’s mixed record on trade, Republicans argue, is hurting his ability to persuade other Democrats to jump on board with granting him streamlined trade negotiating power, as well as a massive 12-country a trans-Pacific trade deal supporters argue is critical to countering China’s economic dominance of the region.
The president’s decision to wait until his final two years in office to try to push the two major trade measures over the objections of skeptical Democrats also is weakening his hand, GOP leaders assert.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, over the weekend said Hillary Clinton supports free trade and needs to speak out and support Obama in order to push the bills across the finish line.
The White House brushed aside Boehner’s remarks, deeming them a “desperate” attempt to distract from the problems GOP leaders are facing corralling enough votes in their own caucus to support trade.
But Republicans say Clinton can’t hide out during a divisive battle within her own party, and because Obama needs her to speak out on the issue now more than ever.
“This White House has failed to convince a single Democrat leader in Congress to stand with the president on trade,” Boehner spokesman Cory Fritz said Tuesday. “If Hillary Clinton can do a better job of helping get Democrats to join with Republicans to pass pro-growth trade agreements, the president ought to get her on the phone right now.”
The issue, however, is dividing members on both sides of the aisle and its fate will likely come down to the decision of a handful of Democratic senators who generally support free trade but still want to weigh any amendments offered when it comes up on the Senate floor.
“I support the package of bills that came out of the Senate Finance Committee and I’m working with my colleagues to figure out the best path forward on the floor,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., told the Washington Examiner Tuesday. “There’s going to be a number of amendments once it gets to the floor. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., another Democrat who could determine the fate of the two major trade measures, told the Examiner he was leaning in favor of both trade-promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership bill.
“An awful lot of businesses have a lot at stake…,” he said. “In Virginia, there have been winners and losers, I’ll give you that. But generally in Virginia, trade is one of the reasons we’ve gone from bottom-quarter per capita income to top 10 in my lifetime.”
“I’m not 100 percent yes or no yet, but I’m generally a pro-trade guy because in Virginia — I do have questions about labor and environmental protections and intellectual property so I’ve been going to meetings to ask questions from the administration folk and others about the current lineup of the bills and potential amendments I would be interested in,” he added.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has threatened to block the administration’s trade deals until lawmakers first deal with the expiring Highway Trust Fund and the Patriot Act.
The White House criticized Reid’s new threat Tuesday, arguing that Reid is “setting the bar awfully low” if he’s arguing that the Senate doesn’t have time to do all three priorities this month.
But Reid and other Democratic opponents of free trade have gained a key GOP ally in their fight. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is opposed to new trade initiatives, arguing that they could cause a flood of new immigrants into the country.
Sessions has generally supported trade deals in the past but he says this time is different.
“Based on what’s happening in the economy today, based on what the average worker is feeling in his or her life, we need to give particular scrutiny of this agreement to make sure it’s positive for middle America,” he said.
The White House last week released an economic report arguing that free trade has increased average pay for workers, but Sessions is skeptical.
“You poll the American people and they don’t think their wages have gone up with these trade agreements,” he said. “We have the lowest percentage of Americans working in their working years since the 1970s, wages are down $3,000 since 2009 and wages have not gone up since 2000.”
“So something out there is happening that is not doing so well,” Sessions said.
Sessions and other opponents on both sides of the aisle also point to increasing trade deficits that fly in the face of proponents’ earlier claims that the U.S. would dramatically increase exports after forming these strategic alliances.
In 2008 Obama set the goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years.
“With the bipartisan trade agreements I signed into law, we are on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule,” he said in his State of the Union speech in 2012. “Soon, there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Soon, there will be new cars on the streets of Seoul imported from Detroit, and Toledo, and Chicago.”
Critics now counter that the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has widened more than 80 percent since the deal took effect.
News also broke Monday that the U.S. trade deficit ballooned to $51.4 billion in March, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“We were promised with all these trade treaties, it was going to make this better,” Sessions said. “So over a period of time, the skeptics are making the point that it hasn’t produced the benefits promises.”
“I think the administration should step it up and prove we’ve got benefits and actually put forth the objective data to help Congress decide whether they should support these trade deals or not.”
