TPP Won't Be Renegotiated, Says White House
The Obama Administration continues to talk with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers about the most effective way to move Trans-Pacific Partnership-implementing legislation forward in Congress, but renegotiation of the agreement itself is off the table, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said during an April 25 press conference at the Hannover Messe trade fair in Hannover, Germany (here). “[W]e’ve spent years trying to get 12 different countries with a wide variety of economic interests around the table to find common ground on these issues, and we've succeeded in doing that,” he said. Earnest added that the White House plans to consult with Congressional GOP leadership about how to garner enough votes to implement the deal. “We certainly are also engaged on the substance,” Earnest said. “It's not just about the process, but also on the substance. And there are a number of members of Congress who have demonstrated an interest in particular areas of the agreement.”
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During the press conference, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue said he expects the administration to negotiate a sidebar agreement to TPP’s pharmaceutical provisions. Some lawmakers, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have expressed concern with the agreement’s data protection timelines for biologic drugs. Undergirding the prospect that TPP’s vote in the Senate will be the closest that chamber has had in a “long, long time” is that up to five Republican senators could lose reelection if they vote for the agreement at the current time, Donohue said. But both chambers will likely vote on the deal by the end of this year, he added. “I would say that that vote in the Senate would come after the election. It will come,” Donohue said. “The vote in the House, with any luck, could be a little bit earlier -- not much. And the reason that I would encourage that is because it will be hard to cram two votes into a lame-duck issue.”