White House ramping up pressure on Congress to pass TPP this year

Top Obama administration officials are ramping efforts to convince Congress to pass an expansive Asia-Pacific trade agreement this year.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman continued the White House’s full-court press to push the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) across Capitol Hill before President Obama leaves office. 

{mosads}“The president remains firm in his commitment to TPP, and is intent on seeing it approved as soon as possible this year,” Lew said on Tuesday at the SelectUSA Investment Summit in Washington.  

“The sooner we pass TPP, the sooner we can deliver the benefits of this landmark agreement for American innovators, businesses and workers,” he said. 

Froman said in a Tuesday speech that the United States is “one vote away from either cementing our leadership in the Asia-Pacific region or ceding it to others.”

“Delayed passage of TPP would severely weaken our leadership, and with that, would have widespread strategic implications,” Froman said at the Rand Corporation breakfast.

Froman said Monday that the White House is mobilizing to sell the TPP to lawmakers over the next several months in a effort that could eclipse last summer’s successful bid to pass trade promotion authority.

“We can pass TPP or be remembered as the generation that imposed a self-inflicted wound on American influence and American leadership around the world. And that doesn’t strike me as a difficult choice,” Froman said. 

“For all these reasons, it is imperative that we make TPP a reality, and soon,” he said.  

“It’s a tough political environment but trade votes have always been tough.”

TPP is facing numerous hurdles from anti-TPP rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail to opposition from congressional Democrats and labor unions.

In addition, trade leaders on Capitol Hill have expressed concern about several issues from the treatment of tobacco to the length of intellectual property protection for high-tech medicines.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on Monday, said that “President Obama believes in the power of commerce to serve as a force for good around the world.”

“That is why he has made completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal a top priority for his final year in office,” she said.