WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today made the following statement regarding the negotiating objectives within the Trade Promotion Authority legislation that passed the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday:
“The negotiating objectives included in the Hatch-Wyden-Ryan TPA legislation are primarily so vague or flexible that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated without strict guidelines in many areas," said Rep. Levin. “As Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra said yesterday, the objectives ‘are aspirations, not instructions.’ Workers in Vietnam and Mexico have no assurance that labor laws in those countries would be brought into compliance with International Labor Organization standards. Foreign investors could challenge an American law or health regulation in an arbitration panel without clear guidelines, instead of U.S. courts with clear rules of law. Countries will be able to manipulate their currencies - harming American businesses and workers - without any clear recourse except consultations. Or take agricultural market access. The negotiating objective is simply to ‘reducing or eliminating’ duties on agricultural products. Japan’s opening offer met that objective, because they agreed to ‘reduce’ but not ‘eliminate’ agricultural tariffs on hundreds of products.
“The Trade Promotion Authority bill passed by the Ways and Means Committee on Thursday has only objectives, often vague, with the certification over whether those objectives have been met left to those who negotiated them. In the needed effort to achieve broad, bipartisan support for TPP, our substitute has clear instructions on these issues, with certification to come from Congress."
