House must derail fast track to protect Constitution, jobs

Many political forecasters are calling for a long hot summer in the halls of the U.S. House of Representatives over the next two months. There, Americans can expect to suffer through lengthy spells of heated rhetoric and scorching debate over one of the most contentious policy initiatives of the presidency of Barack Obama.

That initiative, the Trade Promotion Authority better known as fast-track authority, would give Obama supreme authority to complete a pending trade deal with 11 other Asian nations involving 800 million people and 40 percent of the world economy. It also would, however, deny Congress any opportunities to change, amend or tweak the pact.

That fast-track authority, which we have consistently and fervently opposed, for the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty won Senate approval late last week by a 62-37 vote. That vote climaxed the legislation’s long and winding trail through a deeply divided senior chamber of Congress throughout the spring.

But when summer wends its way into fall and all of the acidic rhetoric has quieted down, we are counting on the opposite outcome – defeat – in the final House vote on the misguided measure. On both constitutional and practical grounds, Trade Promotion Authority should ride the fast track to oblivion.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, has emerged as one of the strongest opponents to fast track in the House. Ryan is on the right track in his sharp constitutional criticism: “It shifts way too much power to the executive branch.” And as any high school student of civics understands, American government still operates on a system of checks and balances.

In “fast track,” the legislative branch would lose its rightful check to correct any errors, omissions or excesses of the president in order to then craft a more fair and balanced agreement.

On practical grounds, without strong fair-trade and enforcement provisions that the House would not be able to guarantee, TPP could deal yet another hard-hitting blow to the U.S. economy, particularly to those regions like the Mahoning Valley with a heavy industrial base.

REMEMBER NAFTA?

For those with short memories, recall some of the devastating fallout from two of the nation’s largest fast-tracked treaties – the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the South Korean Free Trade Agreement in 2011.

NAFTA, the free-trade pact among Mexico, Canada and the United States, sped through Congress on the promise of creating 200,000 American jobs. In a 17-year retrospective on the treaty, the Economic Policy Institute estimates it robbed the U.S. economy of about 700,000 jobs, including about 50,000 in the domestic auto industry.

More recently, the South Korean Free Trade Agreement was adopted on the fast track in 2011 as this nation’s first major free-trade pact with a major Asian nation and the largest such treaty since NAFTA. It, too, promised a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. What America got, however, was a soaring trade deficit with South Korea and a loss of more than 60,000 jobs, including many in the Oil Country Tubular Goods industry, of which the Mahoning Valley is a prime producer.

Only after widespread outrage did the U.S. reverse its position and circumvent that treaty by implementing tariffs against South Korean imports last year.

Now comes the TPP, an even larger behemoth than NAFTA that could bode even more damaging impact to America’s still painfully slow economic recovery.

With such monumental stakes, this agreement merits comprehensive inspection, full consideration and ample opportunities to amend potentially perilous provisions. If Congress ties its own hands by green lighting fast track, it will only have itself to blame for any collateral damage TPP could create.

That’s why it is critical that the House derail fast track as rapidly as possible this summer.