WASHINGTON — For Michael B. Froman, President Obama’s chief evangelist for enhancing global trade, skepticism comes with the territory.
He and his colleagues have clocked more than 1,500 meetings on Capitol Hill to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership — and still its prospects look as problematic as ever.
Even before Froman began facing a leery Congress, he had to persuade wary colleagues at the White House it was worth pursuing. They scoffed that the partnership concept, conceived during the administration of George W. Bush, was too small, with only four Asian countries as members. And in the chaotic days of 2009, when Froman was deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, a campaign to advance a new trade agenda seemed less important than averting a global financial collapse.
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Today Froman, now the US trade representative, is convinced he can complete negotiations on a complex agreement with 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific and sell it to a Congress that remains deeply hostile to Obama.
“The end game is a long game,” Froman said, “but we’re in that end game.”
At stake is a colossal trade agreement that would stretch from Peru and Chile to Japan and Vietnam, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s economic activity. It would not just lower tariffs: It would require rigorous regulations on labor and environmental standards, and the first rules for state-owned enterprises like those in Vietnam and Malaysia.
The partnership has emerged as the linchpin of Obama’s strategic shift to Asia, giving the United States a way to counter the economic inroads made in the region by China.
The deal is supposed to be followed by the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, though those talks have much further to go.
“If the United States succeeds in these trade negotiations, and I think we will, Mike would have forged some of the most important institutions that the president will leave as a legacy,” said Thomas E. Donilon, a former national security adviser.
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Still, to members of Congress, Obama’s trade agenda has been waiting in the wings for so long that the promises are beginning to ring hollow. Efforts to grant Obama trade promotion authority — once known as fast-track authority — have gone nowhere.
Froman insists the political stars have aligned. Republican control of the Senate has elevated pro-trade lawmakers to key positions, and the international negotiations themselves have progressed.
But the deal’s completion is not guaranteed. Republicans inclined to give the president trade-negotiating authority are still seething at his executive action deferring deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants.
Democrats may be the bigger problem. Froman has met dozens of times with Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction on trade. Levin said he wants to work with the administration on the partnership. But he’s not about to let Obama negotiate the partnership on his own, then present it to Congress for an up-or-down vote.
Environmental groups doubt the administration is really pressing for binding, enforceable standards.
And trade unions worry that the administration is putting too much emphasis on protecting intellectual property, a boon to pharmaceutical companies, Hollywood, and rich investors — but not in their view particularly useful to workers.