WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown has decided to block a cabinet-level trade nominee from being confirmed, saying he will relent if President Barack Obama drops a secrecy requirement that has made it hard for Congress to review a pending trade deal with Pacific Rim nations.
The 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, deal still faces negotiating hurdles, but Obama has allowed members of Congress and certain aides to review the text as of now. But the review comes with conditions: the aides must have security clearances, and they may not view the documents unless a member of Congress joins them.
Since Congress members are busy, that makes it tough for aides to spend considerable amounts of time fully reading and understanding details of the pending deal, Brown says. Worse, says the Ohio Democrat, private-sector executives and lobbyists from certain industries, from pharmaceuticals to textiles to finance, have better access because the Obama administration has included them in its TPP consultations.
That means, Brown and other critics say, that even though Congress will ultimately have up to four months to consider the deal after the president completes it, private industry will have had considerably more time and input. Due to related legislation that Congress has already agreed to, lawmakers will be limited in the end to approving or voting down the completed agreement, with little chance to amend it.
So Brown issued an ultimatum to the White House: Allow aides with security clearance to review the TPP drafts on their own now, without hand-holding from their bosses, or else the nomination of Marisa Lago as deputy U.S. trade representative won't get through. Lago's position holds the rank of ambassador.
Obama nominated Lago, an assistant Treasury secretary with a background in economic development, to be a trade ambassador in November. The Senate Finance Committee, on which Brown serves, approved her nomination in early August. But the full Senate has not voted.
Senators may place a "hold" on a nominee as a way of insisting on action on related matters, or as a protest. The chamber's leaders generally honor holds as a matter of courtesy and tradition. The lawmaker placing the hold doesn't even need to identify himself or herself publicly.
But in this case, Brown intends to be public. He said he notified the White House of his intentions last week and gave it until noon today make the text fully accessible to those with proper security clearances. Noon passed without any response, Brown's office said.
"The administration would rather sacrifice a nominee for a key post than improve transparency of the largest trade agreement ever negotiated," Brown said in a statement. "This deal could affect more the 40 percent of our global economy, but even seasoned policy advisors with the requisite security clearance can't review text without being accompanied by a member of Congress."
Brown added that the administration has made it "easier for multinational corporations to get their hands on trade text than for public servants looking out for American workers and American manufacturers."
The office of the United States Trade Representative, Michael Froman, said the current review available to lawmakers and their staffs is preliminary, part of the "unprecedented steps" to keep Congress in the loop by providing the full text even before negotiations are through. The full, final text will be available to all Americans when TPP negotiations wrap up, possibly next year.
"This Administration has taken unprecedented steps to increase TPP transparency and access," the trade representative's office said in a statement. "Every member of Congress has access to the draft TPP negotiating text, as do professional staff members on committees with jurisdiction.
"Our focus is on completing the TPP, which will be posted online in its entirety for the American people to review for months before the President even signs it and for longer before it comes to a vote."
The TPP is controversial, with critics saying it could lead to more foreign products flooding the United States, killing domestic manufacturing jobs. They worry about pharmaceutical and high-tech products that receive patent and intellectual property protections in the United States -- protections that competing countries might challenge as unfair trade practices.
They cite factory job losses in states such as Ohio after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994 and the United States liberalized trade with China in 2000.
The job-loss issue is complicated by other factors, such as rising productivity, technological advances, inflation and currency fluctuations. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in April that trade-related job gains and losses since NAFTA may have accelerated trends that were ongoing prior to the agreement and may not be totally attributable to it.
But economists from the Federal Reserve and Yale University in 2012 studied trends following the increase in trade with China, and found "a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy."
These are among the reasons Brown is skeptical about the TPP and adamant about the details.
But the White House and a number of major companies say the TPP will expand domestic job opportunities rather than shrink them. They note that China is not part of the agreement and that the United States already engages in trade with TPP nations, which include Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Chile and New Zealand.
The agreement will make those countries drop tariffs and other restrictions that have made it harder for United States companies and farmers to export, the White House says.
Congress in June agreed to grant fast-track authority to the White House on this and other trade deals. This means that Congress will have the right to approve any such deals, but the ability to block or amend them is limited.
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