Mark Landler & Jonathan Weisman: The US prepares to reshape world trade

How Obama's trade czar faces challenges in pushing through the Trans-Pacific Partnership - and why he will overcome them

For Michael B Froman, US President Barack Obama's chief evangelist for expanding global trade, scepticism comes with the territory. He and his colleagues have clocked more than 1,500 meetings on Capitol Hill to promote the president's big potential trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - and still its prospects for passage look as problematic as ever.

Even before Froman began facing a leery Congress, he had to persuade wary colleagues at the White House that it was worth pursuing. They scoffed that the original TPP concept, conceived during the administration of George W Bush, was too small, with only four Asian countries as members. And in the chaotic days of 2009, when Froman was deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, embarking on a campaign to advance a new trade agenda seemed less important than averting a global financial collapse.

Having won over his White House colleagues and secured the backing of the president, Froman, now the US trade representative, is convinced that he can complete negotiations on a complex trade agreement that has grown to encompass 12 countries on both sides of the Pacific, and sell it to a US Congress that remains deeply hostile to Obama.

At stake is a colossal trade agreement that would stretch from Peru and Chile to Japan and Vietnam, accounting for 40 per cent of the world's economic activity. It would not just lower tariffs: the pact would require rigorous regulations on labour and environmental standards, as well as the first rules for state-owned enterprises like those run by the governments of Vietnam and Malaysia.

The TPP has emerged as the lynchpin of Obama's strategic shift to Asia, giving the US a way to counter the economic inroads made in the region by a rising China. The deal is supposed to be followed by the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, though those talks have much farther to go.

As the negotiations for TPP have dragged on, missing multiple deadlines, Froman has expressed unwavering confidence in the outcome, saying the various parties are searching for "landing zones" on issues ranging from Japanese farm subsidies to Vietnamese labour regulations. Still, to members of Congress, both for and against expanded trade agreements, Obama's trade agenda has been waiting in the wings for so long that the promises of action are beginning to ring hollow. Efforts in the House and Senate to grant Obama trade promotion authority - once known as fast-track authority, and viewed as critical to passing major trade deals - have gone nowhere.

Froman insists the political stars have aligned. Republican control of the Senate has elevated pro-trade lawmakers to key positions in leadership and committee control, and the international negotiations themselves have progressed. But the deal's completion is certainly not guaranteed. Republicans inclined to give the president trade-negotiating authority are still seething at his executive action deferring deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Democrats may be a bigger problem. Virtually no Democrat who supported trade promotion authority in the past will be left in the Senate next year.

Then there are the details. Environmental groups are doubtful the administration is really pressing for binding, enforceable standards. Peru is already resisting enforcement mechanisms to rein in illegal logging.

Trade unions worry that the administration is putting too much emphasis on protecting intellectual property, a boon to pharmaceutical companies, Hollywood and rich investors, but not particularly useful to workers at home or poor consumers abroad.

And sceptics from both parties are pressing Froman to demand enforceable limits on currency manipulation, which they say inflates the value of the dollar, making American products artificially expensive and imports artificially cheap. The result is a wider trade deficit that costs jobs at home.

About 230 House members and 60 senators have signed letters demanding enforceable sanctions on currency manipulators. Administration officials worry that any enforceable currency regime will cut both ways. They say it could even infringe on the Federal Reserve, making it subject to an international tribunal.

On the broader concerns of reluctant Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Froman pointed to the 18 cases of alleged unfair trade practices the administration has brought before the World Trade Organization, half of them against China, as proof that Obama can be trusted to watch out for the interests of American workers.

The president has mobilised virtually his entire administration to see the trade agenda through: the interior department to work on wildlife trafficking; health and human services to work through pharmaceutical issues, especially intellectual property; the commerce department to reach out to businesses; Treasury to handle currency; the labor department to address worker rights; the Environmental Protection Agency to deal with land, water and air conservation; and the state department to take on broader diplomacy.

Cabinet secretaries have divided up members of Congress to press them individually.

For Froman, success would cement a bond with Obama that began at law school, where both were a few years older than most of their classmates - a distinction, one recalled, that gave them a more worldly aura.

© 2014 The New York Times