Bipartisan rescue bid for Obama’s trade agenda

Washington—United States President Barack Obama’s trade agenda appears to be back on track after an extraordinary bipartisan rescue operation mounted in the week since it was derailed in the House of Representatives by rebellious Democrats backed by organized labor.

Working in tandem with the White House, Republican officials arranged for a Thursday vote in the House on a measure to give Obama authority to negotiate global trade deals that Congress can approve or reject, but not change. The Obama administration wants that authority as part of an effort to complete a 12-nation trade deal with Pacific Rim countries, including Japan.

Separately, a bill to renew an expiring program of aid for workers who lose their jobs because of imports will move quickly.

“We are committed to ensuring both…get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the president for signature,” House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a joint statement issued Wednesday in an attempt to reassure pro-trade Democrats whose votes will be needed.

At the White House, Obama met separately with Democrats lawmakers inclined to support the legislation.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had no comment on the day’s events. The California Democrat joined the revolt last week in which her party’s rank-and-file lawmakers helped vote down the aid package that they customarily support, calculating their actions would prevent the entire trade package from reaching Obama’s desk.

Supporters of the president’s agenda argue that the US must stay involved in international trade, in part because otherwise, other countries like China will write the rules to their own advantage.

Organized labor and other opponents of international trade deals say they cost thousands of American workers their jobs by shifting employment to foreign countries with low wages, poor working conditions and lax environmental standards.

Officials in Congress said Boehner and McConnell hope to have both the trade and the aid legislation to the president by the time lawmakers begin a scheduled vacation at the end of next week.

Obama has not spoken in public in the past two days about the attempt to resurrect his trade bills, nor have White House officials disclosed many details of his role in putting together the rescue attempt. McConnell and Boehner both said on Tuesday that they had spoken with the president on the phone, but they offered little by way of details. AP