Dan Ikenson of Cato notes the following from Congress Daily:
Speaking at the USDA Annual Outlook Forum, [USTR Ron] Kirk said members of Congress “are more open and receptive” to the idea of creating a trans-Pacific agreement because it could be written from scratch.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership comes “without any of the biases of the three [agreements] under consideration,” he said.
Am I reading too much into this, or is Kirk saying that there are substantive parts to the Korea, Colombia and Panama FTAs (the "three" he refers to) that are problematic, and that if USTR can start fresh, they can write an agreement that will be approved by Congress? What exactly are these "biases" they would like to see removed when they write a new agreement "from scratch"? Is it just better negotiating in terms of concessions, or is it actual policy changes?
I feel like we are getting close to seeing what the Obama trade folks have in mind for this one part of trade policy. It would be great if they would just tell us the specific details now, but we'll likely have to wait a bit more.
