The Obama administration would like to see long-sought free trade agreements with those countries approved this year, but officials made clear on Monday they would not move forward without an expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance Program to retrain and support displaced workers in the United States.
"The administration will not submit implementing legislation on the three pending FTAs until we have an agreement with Congress on the renewal of a robust expanded TAA program," White House senior economic adviser Gene Sperling told reporters in a conference call.
"We are hopeful and optimistic that we can work out such a bipartisan agreement, but again we feel its important that that agreement be locked in before we submit the implementing legislation."
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee earlier this month the deals could be passed "by August if not sooner" if the worker assistance program is renewed.
"Keeping faith with America's workers is just as important as our commitment to moving forward the FTAs, but the timing's going to be determined to some degree by Congress," Kirk said on the conference call.
"This does not have to take a long period of time."
President Barack Obama has made expanding trade and exports an important part of his efforts to boost the U.S. economy. Keeping economic recovery and job growth moving is critical to Obama's hopes of holding on to the White House in 2012.
Union voters will also be critical to his re-election effort, however, and the administration is eager to show it is as concerned about American displaced by imports as it is about expanding U.S. exports to free trade partner countries.
Sending a clear message that it will not put forward the free trade agreements without worker aid helps accomplish those dual goals. Sperling said he did not expect the administration would have to walk away from the trade agreements, however.
"We just don't expect it to come to that," he said.
"Most policy-makers, Democrat or Republican, understand that ... someone who loses a job because their firm has shifted production to a place like China or India or other countries needs the retraining and reemployment assistance just like other workers impacted by trade do." (Reuters)
