Policy Department, Directorate-General for External Policies
30
bracketed texts with anonymized negotiating alternatives. Fourth, the USTR provided summaries of the
different TPP chapters to “assist Members of Congress in navigating the negotiating text” (Inside U.S. Trade,
March 20, 2015). Fifth, classified briefings were provided by USTR on the negotiations about sensitive
topics (Inside U.S. Trade, March 27, 2015).
20
Many individual members of Congress also weighed in on the negotiations. During TPP negotiations, for
example, currency manipulations proved to be a consequential issue. In June 2013, 230 members of the
House of Representatives sent a letter to President Obama asking for a provision to be included in the text;
this exceeded the 218 members required for a majority in that house. In September of the same year, 57 of
the 100 Senators did the same. In addition to these letters, the Congressional Auto Caucus (a sort of
working group) and Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican, ranking member and later chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee) were particularly vocal in their support. Congressional pressure on the issue remained
strong throughout the negotiations, resulting in what Bergsten and Schott (2016) have called “an
important distinction in trade policy”: the inclusion of a Declaration that covers currency manipulation and
that is – despite being a Declaration – covered by TPP’s dispute settlement procedures.
21
In TTIP, too, broadly signed Congressional demands were used as a way of gaining influence during
negotiations. Although the Obama Administration preferred to keep regulation of the financial services
sector out of the agreement, Congress was divided on the issue. Particular fears were that the measures
could become a backdoor for the weakening of the Dodd-Frank Law on financial regulation after the 2008
Financial Crisis. In December 2014, a group of Members sent a letter to the Administration warning against
including any provisions that could limit Congress’s ability to act against another financial crisis.
22
The EU’s
geographical indicators for animal products were also controversial: 55 of the 100 Senators signed a letter
against them in March 2014, and by April 67 had expressed their opposition to GIs in dairy or meat
products, or both (Inside U.S. Trade, March 14 and April 25, 2014). Congress also opposed or was divided
on EU regulation on pesticides and food additives, protection of religious freedoms in EU member states
and – like in the European Parliament itself – the exclusion of ISDS from TTIP.
Given these substantive advances in Congressional involvement in the negotiations, it seems that
Congressional pressure resulted in the executive responding to its demands, some of which were even
strategically used in negotiations. Ultimately, however, not all Congressional demands were taken
onboard, in many cases because of resistance from external partners, but sometimes because the U.S.
administration opposed them. In the case of TPP, renegotiation was necessary to allow the agreement to
pass Congress.
23
Almost immediately after the Obama Administration released the negotiated text of the
TPP agreement on November 5, 2015, the debate about renegotiation began. This was largely framed as a
range of “fixes” that should be made to the agreement, also affected by the upcoming presidential and
congressional elections of 2016. Six days after the release, Senate Finance Committee Orrin Hatch called
for a renegotiation of the length of the biologics exclusion provisions; other “fixes” included financial
services provisions and to the labour consistency plan negotiated with Vietnam. The debate rapidly shifted
to how these concerns could be addressed. The Obama Administration – and the majority of negotiating
20
Note however, that this commitment did not end Congressional complaints about the lack of transparency. Noteworthy in this
regard, was Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s claim at an April 2015 Senate Finance Committee hearing that USTR’s
consultations with Congress were “pathetically inadequate”. He particularly complained that USTR was “dragging its feet” on the
promised classified briefings (see Inside U.S. Trade, April 24, 2015). His complaints not only applied to TPP, but also to TTIP. In the
same sense, one of his colleagues in the House – Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) – called USTR to be “at least as forthcoming as the European
Commission” (see Inside U.S. Trade, October 30, 2015).
21
Joint Declaration of the Macroeconomic Policy Authorities of Trans-Pacific Partnership Countries, retrieved from :
https://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/Documents/TPP_Currency_November%202015.pdf
22
Retrieved from : https://democrats-
financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2014.12.01_house_letter_to_administration_on_financial_services_in_ttip.pdf
23
Given the blockage of TTIP-negotiations after Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President, this was not renegotiated, although
talks of the possibility of resuming negotiations started mid-2018.