[CTC] IUST: White House Calls Business To TPP Meeting; Donohue Sees Lame Duck Vote

[Dolan, Mike]

Thursday, January 28, 2016
Daily News
White House Calls Business To TPP Meeting; Donohue Sees Lame Duck Vote
January 27, 2016

The Obama administration has invited major U.S. companies and business associations to the White House this Friday (Jan. 29) for a meeting on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that informed sources predicted is an effort by the administration to rally support for early congressional passage of the agreement.

Among those invited are the co-chairs of the Trade Benefits America Coalition and the U.S. Coalition for TPP as well as roughly a dozen trade associations, sources said.

Two sources speculated that administration officials would urge business representatives to be more active in lobbying members of Congress to support quick action on the TPP.

Business representatives have begun a coordinated effort<http://insidetrade.com/node/152083> to build support in Congress for the TPP while also pushing for improvements to the deal, but are not yet engaged in a full-fledged lobbying push. This is in part because key Senate Republicans including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have made clear they do not want a vote on TPP prior to the November election.

One business source said the White House has become increasingly worried the TPP vote will not get done this year as it has come to the realization that these Senate Republicans are entrenched in their position.

Some U.S. business representatives including U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue are also skeptical about quick TPP action.

In a Jan. 20 interview with Bloomberg Television, Donohue said TPP will not be voted on prior to the election because Senate Republicans do not want to do anything that could jeopardize senators in close races. But he said he believed there was a 75 percent chance that TPP would get done in the lame-duck session after the election.

“If you tried to vote [on TPP] right now, the Senate wouldn't let you do it,” he said. This is because the Republicans do not want to put three or four very important senators at risk in their re-election bid at a time when there are more Republicans than Democrats up for re-election, according to Donohue.

“I think … it'll either happen right after the election or it'll happen in a lame-duck session, and everybody thinks that's a bad deal, we should push it now,” he said. “You can't make it go now.”

He said another reason to delay TPP consideration is to give business more time to secure votes from both Democrats and Republicans, stressing that votes on trade agreements are always close. “And remember, a trade deal, when it's all said and done, it's successful if you win by two votes: one vote to win and one vote in case somebody dies on the way to the vote,” Donohue said.

The Chamber president said he expected Hillary Clinton would ultimately support the TPP if she becomes the Democratic nominee for president and is elected. He argued that she has publicly opposed the deal chiefly because her main challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has also done so. “If she were to get nominated, if she were to be elected, I have a hunch that what runs in the family is you get a little practical if you ever get the job,” he said.

Donohue said there are still “two or three things that needs to be fixed” in the TPP, but that these could be dealt with either through side agreements with other countries or domestic commitments from the administration. “It can be done at home or it can be done in agreements with other countries,” he said.

The Chamber's three main objections to TPP are what it considers an inadequate market exclusivity period for biologic drugs; the carveout of tobacco control measures from investor-state dispute settlement; and the exclusion of the financial services sector from a general ban on government requirements that data be stored on local servers.

One industry source favoring quick action on TPP said that if some or all of these issues can be resolved to the satisfaction of U.S. companies, then business lobbyists might be able to exert sufficient pressure on Senate Republicans to change their minds about considering the deal prior to the election. In such a situation, business groups are likely to argue that the longer TPP is delayed, the bigger the risk is that it will not come together at all, this source said.

But another industry source expressed skepticism that business groups would be willing to go against McConnell and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who also taken a go-slow approach on TPP. Doing so could hurt their ability to get support from these lawmakers on other priorities in the future, this source said.

He also noted that McConnell and Hatch likely want to the administration to negotiate the TPP fixes directly with them, instead of with business groups.

But several sources said they did not see any incentive for McConnell and Hatch to cut a deal with the administration on TPP fixes in the near term when they have already made clear they do not want the trade deal to come up prior to the election.

Obama administration officials involved in the outreach to business include Elizabeth Kelley, who during the last few months left her job as assistant U.S. trade representative for private sector engagement to work for the White House; Ashley Jones, a former aide to Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who took over Kelley's position at USTR; and Diana Doukas, director of the White House Business Council.



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