Republicans push Obama to rally Democrats for TPP vote

The top Republican lawmaker on trade has called for US President Barack Obama to work even harder to build support among Democrats for a crucial trade bill on the eve of what are expected to be divisive votes in Congress.

"We've still got a lot of raindrops to run through here without getting splashed," Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, told the Financial Times in an interview.

The Utah Republican is one of the sponsors of a bill unveiled last month that would grant Mr Obama the "fast-track" authority he needs to wrap up the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim economies.

If successfully concluded, the TPP, which covers some 40 per cent of the global economy, would be the biggest trade deal sealed in the world in two decades.

The bill to grant the president what is formally known as "Trade Promotion Authority" is expected to come to a Senate vote as soon as this week and to be presented in the lower House of Representatives before the end of May.

It faces stiff opposition from many Democrats who are coming under intense pressure from labour unions to resist Mr Obama's trade agenda. But Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, insist they need Democratic support to offset defections by some tea party Republicans opposed to giving the president anything at all.

Mr Hatch said he and fellow Republican Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, were having some success convincing some tea party Republicans. He also praised Mr Obama for taking on his critics in the Democratic party more forcefully in recent weeks.

But the president and his Republican allies on the issue still faced a tough fight, Mr Hatch said.

"This is one thing where the president is right and you would think Democrats would help him to have this big victory," the senator said. "It would be the most important victory for the president in his whole eight years."

Democratic opponents "are going to throw bombs in the Senate when we bring it up", he said. "[The president has] got to work to get more Democrats on board."

Fast-track authority commits Congress to holding simple up-or-down votes on trade agreements rather than seeking to renegotiate them via amendments. It has been held out as a precondition by Japan, New Zealand and other TPP countries to concluding the deal.

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Holding a vote in Congress to ratify the deal during the 2016 election year "might be impossible", Mr Hatch said. "The longer this goes the tougher it's going to be. Unless the administration pulls out every stop in the book."

Mr Obama has been lobbying Democrats more heavily in recent weeks, both in public and private. On Thursday he met with almost 30 pro-business Democrats from the House for what one representative called an "advanced graduate student seminar on trade and the politics of trade".

At best, however, there are now only 50-60 Democrats in the 435-member House who might support granting the president fast-track authority, said Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat. Mr Connolly is one of just 13 Democrats in the House to come out publicly in support of the bill.

Mr Hatch said he was baffled by Democratic opposition to the TPP, which he argued was vitally important for the US to conclude at a time when competition with China was growing.

"We've lost so much prestige in this world that the Chinese are really taking advantage of it," he said.

"Here we have a monumental opportunity to enter an agreement with Japan including agriculture matters, that is the best we've ever had, and these people are throwing road blocks up against it? There's something awfully wrong."

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