[CTC] Canada Gov't Change To Delay TPP Text; Dems Push Quick Action

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Canada Gov't Change To Delay TPP Text; Dems Push Quick Action
Posted: October 22, 2015

The impending government change in Canada will pose a further delay to efforts by Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries to prepare the text for release to the public on top of the ongoing work to finish drafting, translating and legally scrubbing the deal.

In an Oct. 22 interview with Inside U.S. Trade, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said the administration officials made clear to him at a White House meeting a day earlier on trade that the U.S. wants to release the text as soon as possible, but that the Liberal Party's victory in Canada's Oct. 19 elections will cause a delay.

"As far as the text is concerned, I think they want to get it out sooner rather than later," Meeks said. "There's some issues I guess because of … the results in Canada, so we've got to make sure that the new administration there has a chance to review and deal with their aspects of it.”

The text that is publicly released is not expected to be the final legally scrubbed text, although TPP governments will likely want to ensure that it is as close to the final text as possible so that opponents cannot point to changes made at the last minute.

U.S. trade officials also told cleared agriculture advisers in an Oct. 22 briefing that the outcome of the Canadian election will delay the efforts to finalize the text, according to informed sources. But one source said he did not get the impression that the new Canadian government's review of the text would take more than a few days.

U.S. trade officials were pressed during that meeting on when the text would be released, but merely said they were working to get make it public as soon as possible, according to informed sources. They said U.S. officials have hinted that cleared advisers would not get to see the text before it is made public, but that the version released would include the core text, side letters and market access schedules.

During the briefing, cleared advisers were not shown the text, but were instead allowed to ask specific questions of a U.S. trade official who had a copy, according to these sources.

Meeks said he did not think that the Canadian government's review would involve a determination of whether to back the deal or not, but that it is merely playing "catch up" since the agreement was negotiated by the outgoing Conservative government. Canadian political analysts said they expected the Liberal Party to support the TPP deal as negotiated (see related story).

Meeks said President Obama made clear during the Oct. 21 White House meeting that he wants to work collaboratively with congressional Republicans to get the TPP text to Congress rather than trying to handle it in an "adversarial way.”

"He's trying to do it in a conciliatory way in an open process that will get the bill before members for review and then to vote on," he said. "He very specifically stated that he intended on working with Republicans on both the House and the Senate side.”

The administration originally intended to launch the process very quickly by notifying Congress of the president's intent to sign the TPP deal, but appears to have backed off that approach after Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) on Oct. 7 warned the president not to notify until Congress has the final text.

Senate Republican staff has since amplified this message and insisted that Congress must have time for a deliberate review of the final TPP text to ensure that it meets the objectives of the fast-track law and is strong enough to attract sufficient congressional support. The staff has also stressed that the administration needs to collaborate with Congress in setting the timeline for the notification of the president's intent to sign the TPP, but that there is no agreement on a timeline yet.

That demand to slow down the process is at odds with calls from Meeks and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) for the administration to move quickly in order to bring the TPP to a vote in Congress in the first two or three months of 2016. They have argued that failure to do so would make TPP more difficult to pass because it would coincide with congressional primaries, in which lawmakers will likely be pushed to take more critical views of TPP (see related story).

Meeks said he and his colleagues conveyed that position to administration officials at the White House meeting, where he said President Obama delivered a two-fold message to attending Democrats. He first thanked the congressional Democrats who attended for voting in favor of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in June.

Obama also told the lawmakers he thinks they will be pleased with the TPP agreement that was negotiated, specifically the provisions on labor rights, environmental protections, and protections for governments against challenges of tobacco-control measures, according to Meeks.

The White House meeting was another indication of how closely the administration is working with Democrats in Congress to build support for the TPP. That close coordination has taken hold after the fast-track vote, sources said.

Meeks said TPP countries are still engaged in drafting legal language for the agreement that they reached on Oct. 5 in Atlanta, backing up the assessment by other sources that officials are still drafting parts of the text and side letters in addition to conducting the legal scrub and translation.

TPP officials are working to finalize the text in a two-week meeting in Tokyo that is slated to last until the end of October (see related story).
 
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