I’ve been preoccupied with non-political matters over the last week or so, and that’s left me at a disadvantage in trying to write about the president’s trade bill and how it is proceeding in Congress. Burgess Everett has an adequate explanation in Politico if you’re looking for just a basic primer. You’ll probably want to look at the roll call that took place in the U.S. Senate at 10 o’clock this morning. This was a basic cloture vote that pretty much stops the amendment process and sets a time to end debate on the portion of this package that gives the president trade promotion authority. The simplest way of understanding the vote is that it means that the Senate will probably be able to set it up so the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement can get an up or down vote without anyone in the Senate being able to amend the treaty.
Whether you support the TPP or not, it’s essential that these types of agreements are not amended by the various national legislatures that have to approve them. Without the assurance that such agreements won’t be modified, negotiations and compromises could not occur. So, what this vote really was was an opportunity for opponents of this free trade agreement to kill it by insisting on the right to make amendments. If they had been successful on this point, they would have vanquished the TPP.
That didn’t happen.
But that doesn’t mean that the TPP will be approved. It still has many hurdles to clear before it can get to the president’s desk.
The vote was still revealing, however. You might notice that some senators defied popular preconceptions about their ideology. Supposedly Wall Street-friendly Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, and Bob Menendez voted against giving the president fast track authority, while liberals like Ron Wyden and Patty Murray voted with the president. Senators from New Hampshire voted yes while Maine senators voted no. Conservative-minded red state Democrats split, as Joe Manchin of West Virginia was against it and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was for it. Finding explanations for these votes requires some investigation into details that cannot be reduced to simple ideological predispositions. South Carolina and Washington state senators are pro-trade because Boeing is pro-trade. Delaware senators are corporate-friendly by default. Some senators were horse-trading for a vote on the Export-Import Bank, which was also a top priority for Boeing.
One reason that I’ve barely written about the TPP is that I never for a moment thought that it had a prayer of passing. I’m still pretty skeptical about its chances, but it didn’t die today and it could have.
Up until recently, I thought that the administration didn’t even want it to pass but felt compelled to go through the motions. I can see that they’ve finally begun working with some degree of energy to get this thing done, but I still sense a ton of ambivalence. If it doesn’t happen and they can tell corporate America that it was the Republicans’ fault, I think they know this will be the best thing for the party going forward. Of course, the administration is as divided on this as the left is, and knowing where the president really stands is not possible.
The official line is that this is good policy and a big priority. But it’s also a big priority to keep corporate America happy with the Democrats and upset with the Republicans. It’s a priority to keep the unions energized and the right divided. It’s a priority to present America internationally as committed to free trade and these kinds of agreements, even if we no longer fully believe in them ourselves.
So, we’ll see. I don’t think there are enough people who really want this thing to pass to make it happen. I have never thought so.
I could be wrong.
