Will the TransPacific Partnership Agreement Go into the Deep Freeze?

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Will the TransPacific Partnership Agreement Go into the Deep Freeze?
Posted on May 16, 2015 by Yves Smith


Yves here. It’s been discouraging to see a significant portion of members of the commentariat take a “These awful trade deals are inevitable, lie back and think of England” attitude as far as fighting the trade deals are concerned, and are unwilling to make even the small investment of time required to call their Senators and Representative to put their opposition on record.

The battle is going far better than the opposition expected. Obama had planned to have Fast Track authority sail through the Senate so as to prove to the House, where he faces a real fight, that the bill has bipartisan support, Majority Leader John Boehner has made clear that he is not going to pass a bill without having meaningful Democratic party air cover, and he hasn’t seen enough evidence of that in whip counts. The fact that Obama got a visible black eye in the Senate and has lost time in moving the bill forward has strengthened the position of opponents and called more public attention to the process. It also has underminded Obama’s plan to make approval of Fast Track authority seem uncontroversial and inevitable.

This post explains why merely delaying Obama so that he does not get the bill passed in May throws a likely fatal wrench into the entire deal. The Administration is already about as late as it can be in getting the deal done, given the moving parts overseas and the President moving into lame duck territory. One thing the author gets wrong is when Congress goes out of session. The last day for business this month for the House is this Thursday, the 21st, and for the Senate, Friday the 22nd. .................(more)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/05/will-the-transpacific-partnership-agreement-go-into-the-deep-freeze.html