One of the hot-button items in the current news cycle is the ‘stinging defeat’ that the Obama administration suffered at the hands of Congress last week. This defeat took the form of an overwhelming rejection of certain trade provisions that were proposed by the administration be made law.
I am not interested in taking up space in this column to discuss the merits and demerits of the laws themselves. Even though trade certainly falls under within scope of a blog of ‘musings about time and money’, I haven’t invested the time to really form an intelligent opinion about the proposed powers that the president was seeking.
No, what I want to comment on is the lack of clarity in the terminology associated with these laws. This lack of clarity was abundantly clear to me as I struggled to keep TPP straight from TPA from TAA. There were simply too many T’s to keep straight without careful thought and confusion was sure to abound.
Sadly, it seems that even trained journalists (I often wonder if that term is an oxymoron – but I digress) seem incapable of discerning the difference. A point that was driven home as I listened to NPR’s Steve Inskeep
as he clumsily interviewed Paul Ryan about these matters.
NPR’s bio has the following to say about Mr. Inskeep
Despite his probing intellect and passion and compassion for his fellow man, Steve is apparently unable to keep his alphabet soup straight, so as a public service in the opposite direction of the usual, I present some basic information about the three T’s back to NPR.
The TPP
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed trading framework between the United States of America and eight other Trans-Pacific countries – Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam.
The TPP is essentially a larger, and perhaps more ambitious, version of such free trade arrangements as NAFTA or the Israel Free Trade Agreement. The United States has entered into many such agreements (14 by my count). Its advocates tout its promise of open markets in Asia, level playing fields when it comes to such things as intellectual property rights and import/exports, and to the influence the US will have in improving working conditions. Its opponents point to infringement on US sovereignty, the jobless and rather dismal recovery, and the threat of displaced workers, which brings us to item two – the TAA.
The TAA
The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), is a federal program (or maybe more appropriately a set of programs) designed to help certain segments of the economy that are damaged by the opening of new markets, either domestic or abroad, to new competition.
The largest function of the TAA is to provide assistance to displaced workers who find themselves either out of a job or threatened with weakening wages and bargaining power due to an increase in the labor pool.
A familiar situation in which TAA-like service may have been applied was during the transition from typewriters to word processing programs for the desktop computing (although the TAA doesn’t cover workers displaced by technology or changing tastes). This relatively sudden change in technology and office process forced almost all employees in the typewriter manufacturing sector out of work. These workers could have received help from the TAA to train new jobs in different sectors (if the TAA had actually been able to help).
Proponents of the TAA point to the continuity it brings to the lives of workers as they transition into new careers: minimizing impact to them and their families and keeping them in the work force. Most sides agree that the objectives of the TAA are sound, but some point to the particular implementation as being flawed.
The TPA
The final T in the trinity (yet another T-word) is the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). Also known as Fast Track, the TPA is a power granted by Congress to the President to act as a single negotiator for the United States. With this power comes great responsibility, so when a deal had been tentatively struck, the President must then bring the completed deal back to Congress where it is subjected to a single up-or-down vote, with no opportunity for amendments.
The TPA is very controversial, primarily due to the concentration of power to negotiate potentially disruptive trade deals in the hands of a small number of bureaucrats. Those in favor of granting the president TPA argue that no foreign country wants to negotiate with 536 people (all of Congress and the president) and the fact that Congress has the last word. TPA opponents insist that closed-room negotiations that impact thousands or millions of workers is un-American and that it places too much power in the hands of people who might be corrupted by it (see Lord Acton’s famous maxim).
Summary
Despite the similarity in their acronyms, the three Ts taking center stage in this current trade debate are really distinct things of varying controversy. The least objectionable is the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which seems to have universal support for what it tries to do even if opinions disagree on how to do it or how efficacious the current implementation is. The next two Ts are close in their controversy level, but I think that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) runs in second. Sides are divided on whether they like what this deal brings to the table but not as much as they seem to be in disagreement on how it will happen. Granting the president Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) seems to be a real sticking point and if he doesn’t get this authority the next logical question is how will the US negotiate free trade agreements (maybe there is even debate as to whether it should, but that is a topic for another blog).
So it’s easy to see that the 3 Ts are quite different and that with a little work, even a journalist should be able to keep them straight.