Supporters of the world’s largest trade agreement are scrambling to revive its fortunes in Congress, but the message from other countries is plain: Time is running out.
Representatives of the 11 other countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership are keenly aware that President Barack Obama hasn’t gotten his own party to support the crucial “fast-track” legislation that would allow him to clinch the deal. The paralysis in Washington has thrown the trade talks’ final stage into limbo and could make negotiations slip past summer — which means it could be up to Obama’s successor to secure the trade agenda that he has cast as his signature economic legacy.
GOP lawmakers and some moderate Democrats are regrouping in their effort to pass fast track, and a deal could come together quickly. But if it doesn’t, the timeline for votes on the bill and the Asia-Pacific trade pact could slip too far into the 2016 election season to make them politically feasible, U.S. and foreign officials say.
“The president wants it, everybody knows this is important, and he can’t get it through,” Singaporean Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam said at a panel discussion in Washington this week. “How credible are you going to be? The world doesn’t wait.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/trade-delay-asia-pacific-tpp-119129.html?hp=t1_r
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