Obama visits Congress in last-ditch effort to pass TPA bill

WASHINGTON (ICIS)–President Barack Obama on Friday morning drove to the US Congress to meet with his fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives in an apparent 11th-hour effort to secure passage of a critical trade measure.

Obama was driven to the House chambers on Capitol Hill to meet with Democrat representatives during their regular morning meeting.  He was expected to press them to support passage in the House of a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill, also known as fast-track trade authorisation.

It is very rare for the US president to visit Congress, other than his traditional, annual appearance before a joint session of the legislature to deliver his “state of the union” address each January.

Otherwise, presidents seldom visit Capitol Hill.  Such a personal appearance by the president in Congress is considered by some as a breach of the traditional separation of powers enshrined in the US Constitution.

Obama’s visit to Capitol Hill consequently is seen as a desperate effort to round up enough Democrat votes to secure passage of the TPA measure.

The TPA bill, which is up for a final vote later on Friday, allows the president to negotiate trade deals with foreign countries or groups of countries and then submit the final agreement to Congress for an up-or-down vote. 

Under the take-it-or-leave-it terms of TPA, Congress cannot amend the trade deal but must simply approve or reject the agreement as a whole.

Securing TPA is essential to Obama’s two-year effort to secure special multi-nation trade deals with 11 Asian Pacific Rim countries and separately with the EU.

TPA had been almost routinely authorised by Congress for US presidents since 1974, with some interruptions. But TPA lapsed in 2007 and has been a point of dispute since then, chiefly along party lines.

Most Democrats in Congress oppose TPA, along with some Republican members of the House.  It is thought unlikely that the House can approve TPA without some considerable number of Democrats joining with the majority Republicans to pass the measure.

US chemical producers and a wide range of other manufacturers and exporters have long sought restoration of TPA for the White House, seeing it as a means of lowering foreign tariffs against US goods and raw materials.

But US labour unions, environmentalists and other traditionally Democrat constituencies oppose TPA and the trans-Pacific trade agreement that Obama has been negotiating.

Without TPA, Obama likely will not be able to present the trans-Pacific trade bill to Congress.

The TPA provision was approved earlier in the US Senate, but it was known to face much stronger opposition in the House, especially among Democrats.