[CTC] USTR Official: TPP Implementing Bill Will Be Short, Could Take 10 Days To Pass In Lame-Duck

Wed Aug 3 12:19:05 PDT 2016

INSIDE US TRADE
USTR Official: TPP Implementing Bill Will Be Short, Could Take 10 Days To Pass In Lame-Duck
August 02, 2016 
COEUR D’ALENE, ID -- The Office of the United States Trade Representative's chief agriculture negotiator Darci Vetter said here Aug. 2 that the Trans-Pacific Partnership implementing bill will largely consist of language to implement tariff cuts, and that Congress could pass it in as few as 10 days in a lame-duck session if there is sufficient support for the trade agreement.

Vetter noted that the timelines for congressional consideration of TPP laid out in the 2015 Trade Promotion Authority law are deadlines, and Congress is likely to move faster than what is required by it due to familiarity TPP as well as the fact that the implementing bill cannot be amended.

But such rapid action on TPP in a lame-duck session would require not only support for the agreement, but also commitments from leadership in the House and Senate, and the chambers’ respective trade committees, that the implementing bill would be quickly pushed through.

The TPA law stipulates that, once an implementing bill for a free trade agreement is submitted, congressional consideration cannot take longer than 90 legislative days. The process begins with the House Ways & Means Committee, which must report out an FTA implementing bill within 45 legislative days after the president submits it to Congress. Within 15 legislative days after that, the bill must be voted on by the full House.

The law also requires that the Senate Finance Committee vote on the bill within 15 legislative days of the House floor vote, and that there be a vote on the Senate floor vote 15 legislative days after that. The House and Senate may act concurrently in order to speed up the process, but they do not have to.

Senate Finance Committee member Mike Crapo (R-ID) told reporters after giving remarks at the 33rd annual Sweetener Symposium here today that USTR staff has been in contact with his office regarding TPP and the implementing bill, and he agreed with Vetter’s statement that Congress could move through the TPA requirements and pass TPP within 10 days in a lame-duck session. Crapo has not taken a stance on TPP.
“If there are [enough votes] it can certainly be done in 10 days, over even less,” Crapo said. “Probably it’ll take a little bit longer because there’d undoubtedly be a filibuster and the Senate would have to get through a couple of cloture votes.”

Crapo added: “But to me, the underlying question is will the votes be there even after the election. And I just don’t know. You’ve got opposition from both parties and you’ve got support from both parties. It’s going to involve a very effective vote counting effort immediately after the election to answer that question.”

Vetter said that USTR is still working with congressional leadership on some “elements” of the bill unrelated to tariff cuts, and described the writing of the bill as an “iterative process.”
She said the administration will send the implementing bill to Congress as soon as leadership signals that the votes are there to pass it.

Vetter maintained that despite the anti-trade rhetoric sweeping across the United States, a lame-duck session is a “window” for a successful TPP vote. Failure to pass the agreement before the next administration takes office could cause the deal to be shelved for years, she said, while launching into a pitch for the deal featuring arguments oft-used Obama administration.

Whether enough support for the agreement exists, both from rank-and-file members of Congress as well as in the leadership, remains an open question.

The administration will have to pick up votes from Democratic members beyond those who voted for TPA last summer in order to pass TPP, according to Jaime Castaneda, senior vice president for strategic initiatives and trade policy at the National Milk Producers Federation. He told Inside U.S. Trade on the sidelines of the Sweetener Symposium that adding more Democrats than those who voted for TPA is necessary to make up for Republican defections over the tobacco carveout as well as other issues.

In that vein, Crapo in his remarks said the TPA vote closely reflects where members stand on TPP, but there are certainly some objectives laid out in TPA that members do not believe were obtained in the final TPP deal. The trade agreement faces “headwinds” from both sides of the aisle, and members are wary that the United States’ TPP partners will not live up to their commitments in the final deal, which may sap support for it, he said.

Crapo characterized TPP’s path to approval as “murky” and pointed to recent statements from [congressional] leadership indicating that sufficient support for the agreement may not currently exist and that there may be no political appetite to consider the deal even in a lame-duck session. This may have been a reference to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) July 26 remarks <http://t.sidekickopen62.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJN7t5XZsQBb5sW7fK9548qSrXxVfmQ8b56dx-6dlnHZT02?t=http%3A%2F%2Finsidetrade.com%2Fnode%2F155301&si=5880531197100032&pi=f685c319-06c1-4b33-e4f6-64d62738bd22> that the administration has “screwed up” negotiating, has lost his support, and raised doubts about it coming up for a vote in a lame-duck session.

The American Sugar Alliance’s trade advisor, Don Philips, who spoke on a panel regarding trade agreements and agriculture alongside Castaneda, described TPP’s outlook as “bleak.”

The Idaho senator also charged that the administration is just now realizing that changes to the agreement are necessary to lock in the support required to pass the agreement.

But he also noted that the White House is wary of considering changes that could require the agreement to be reopened because doing so could “unravel” the entire deal. Any new U.S. demand could upset the careful balance struck among the TPP countries in the final deal, Crapo said.

USTR Michael Froman has identified Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) complaint that the length of protection for biologic drugs required by TPP is too short, and the administration has yet to reach a compromise with Hatch on that issue.

After his remarks, Crapo told reporters that he was not sure what a compromise between Hatch and the administration on the biologics issue would look like but he said that that a deal needs to happen before TPP moves forward. A number of sources closely following TPP have made similar observations.

Hatch and the White House have held a series of high-level discussions over the past months, but have not struck a deal to resolve the issue. In July, Hatch told Inside U.S. Trade that the White House appears willing to move toward meeting his demands <http://t.sidekickopen62.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJN7t5XZsQBb5sW7fK9548qSrXxVfmQ8b56dx-6dlnHZT02?t=http%3A%2F%2Finsidetrade.com%2Fnode%2F155135&si=5880531197100032&pi=f685c319-06c1-4b33-e4f6-64d62738bd22>.

The senator’s push for 12 years of market exclusivity stands in contrast to provisions in TPP, which would require participants to comply with one of two options. The first of which is to provide at least eight years of exclusivity. The second option is to provide five years of exclusivity, and undertake additional regulatory measures that U.S. officials say should effectively extend that protection to eight years.

Hatch has rejected a proposal floated by the Obama administration that sought to assure members of Congress that TPP provides eight “real” years of data exclusivity, which Hatch said he could not live with. -- Jack Caporal(jcaporal at iwpnews.com <mailto:jcaporal at iwpnews.com>)
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