Obama Campaigns for Free Trade with Asia

President Obama has just started a campaign sprint for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. This controversial trade liberalization project complicates Hillary Clinton’s electoral strategy … and Stephen Harper’s.

A key element of the legacy that Barack Obama wants to leave in foreign politics is the “pivot to Asia,” of which the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a pillar. The president is betting big on this trade agreement, but several of his political allies will be more difficult to convince than his opponents.

Apart from the United States, the TPP includes 11 other countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, Australia, and Singapore. Distanced from the negotiations, China, India, South Korea and Taiwan are carefully following the process and could join the TPP in the more or less distant future. The stakes are enormous.

Beyond trade, the TPP touches on vast areas of economic and financial regulation. Its proponents tout the anticipated benefits of opening the markets, but the project is stirring up a lot of fears. Unions and several leftist voices are denouncing measures that would facilitate the relocation of jobs to low wage economies or limit the economic flexibility of governments.

A Project that Revives Tensions

Historically, trade liberalization agreements have provoked conflicts between political parties and the divisions within them. Trade also often divides the president, who sees the issue from a global perspective, and Congress, which struggles with the pressure of special interests.

For example, the approval of NAFTA in 1993 was strongly supported by Republicans and caused significant tensions between then new Democratic President Bill Clinton and the more left-leaning members of his party in Congress.

It seems to be happening again with the TPP. To continue negotiations, the president needs Congress to support his authority to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that Congress must fast track. The Republicans, in league with large companies, strongly support the president — which is rare these days — but he must also convince six Democratic senators to vote with them, and that is far from being accomplished.

A Delicate Issue

President Obama no longer needs to worry about his re-election, but the same can’t be said for the Democratic representatives, who will provoke the wrath of the unions and the left if they support the TPP.

Hillary Clinton, virtually guaranteed the Democratic nomination for the 2016 presidential elections, has kept her distance from the president regarding this issue, which promises to have explosive consequences in the context of her party’s primaries. It seems strange that Obama’s former secretary of state is distancing herself from him on an issue of foreign politics, but she stands to gain considerable advantage by avoiding alienating the left, in order to present a united partisan front in 2016.

Stephen Harper is carefully observing all of this. He wants Canada to remain in this exclusive club, but that can only be accomplished with major concessions. Americans are especially insisting on the abandonment of the supply management system in the dairy industry. In the middle of an election year, Harper won’t complain if the TPP advances … but not too quickly.