(Washington Post – Felicia Sonmez and Zachary A. Goldfarb)
Three long-delayed trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia are moving closer to a vote after the Senate’s leaders
announced that they had reached an agreement to bring the pacts up for
consideration when Congress returns from recess in September.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) also agreed to hold a vote on a program favored by Democrats,
called Trade Adjustment Assistance, which provides aid and retraining to
workers who have lost their jobs because work was sent overseas.
The White House and its Democratic allies had demanded that Congress renew the
trade assistance program in order to move forward on the trade deals.
Congressional approval is by no means guaranteed, but passage of the deals
would fulfill a plank of President Obama’s economic policy. Obama, who
expressed skepticism as a candidate about free trade, has hailed the agreements
as crucial to increasing U.S. sales overseas. Obama has called for a doubling of U.S. exports by 2015. “These agreements will support tens of thousands
of jobs here at home,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said after news of
the Senate agreement. Read more here.
