AFTER five years, American-led negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade liberalization agreement with 11 other countries that collectively account for 40 percent of the world’s economy, are nearly complete. The next step is for Congress to allow for the same legislative process — an up-or-down vote on the deal — that it applied to recent trade pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 and theUnited States-South Korea free trade agreement of 2011.
But the congressional outlook for this approach — called Trade Promotion Authority, or fast-track negotiating authority, because it does not allow amendments or filibustering — has dimmed. Without it, the agreement would collapse, the victim of endless amendments. The coming vote, therefore, is the equivalent to a vote on the TPP itself. Should it die, the adverse impact on American national security would be great.
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