Top U.S. trade official asks Congress for fast-track authority in trade deals

A top U.S. trade official on Tuesday urged lawmakers to secure a bill for the so-called fast- track authority in negotiating trade deals and move forward the Obama administration's ambitious trade agenda.

"There is no other area of policy that reflects closer coordination between the Executive branch and Congress than trade policy. To further strengthen that cooperation, as the President made clear last week, we look to Congress to pass a bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said before a hearing at the Senate Finance Committee.

"We also have a structure now at the White House organizing a whole-of-administration effort involving virtually the entire cabinet to promote the overall trade agenda," Froman said, adding that the administration had talked to lawmakers about "the importance of moving ahead on a bipartisan basis with trade promotion authority."

Trade promotion authority, also known as fast-track, empowers the president to negotiate trade deals and then present them to Congress for up-or-down votes, with no amendments allowed. Without such authority, many trade analysts say, Obama's hopes to enact trade deals before he leaves office will be doomed.

The Obama administration is engaged in two ambitious and difficult trade negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the Trans- Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union, in a bid to write new rules of trade for the 21st century.

Froman said the administration aims to successfully conclude the TPP trade talks this year. "The contours of a final agreement are coming in to focus, and we have made important progress in the market access negotiations and in addressing a number of twenty- first century issues such as intellectual property, digital trade, competition with state-owned enterprises," he said.

While trade has emerged in recent weeks as one of the few areas where Obama and the leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress agree, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers and activists from labor unions and environmental groups opposes granting Obama that trade authority, arguing that those trade deals have hurt U.S. workers and increased income inequality.

Charles Schumer, a top senate Democrat in the committee, on Tuesday expressed concerns that new trade deals will not help middle-class incomes. He also said the Obama administration must do more to prevent currency manipulation.

"I can't support a TPP agreement if we do not at the same time enact new statutory law that includes objective criteria to define and enforce against currency manipulation. I will not support moving this trade agreement forward if we're not fighting to make sure we have the necessary tools to protect the American middle class and American jobs," Schumer said.

Several anti-trade protesters interrupted Froman's testimony during the two-hour hearing, shouting "my job was shipped overseas. " Those remarks underscored the Obama administration's challenge in getting enough votes from Democrats to move forward the trade agenda.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said last week that he aims to introduce a bill granting the president fast-track authority by the end of January and may move the bill to the Senate floor in March. It is still unclear whether the legislation could get enough votes for passage in both houses of Congress. Endite