Scott Lincicome's KORUS Afterthoughts include questions about the applicability of the Trade Promotion Authority (Fast Track) to the supplementary deal:
...I'm very curious as to whether this "new" agreement will be covered by the now-expired Trade Promotion Authority (aka "fast track"), which subjects trade agreements completed and signed before July 1, 2007 to strict procedural requirements and thus prevents congressional meddling. A few observers are assuming that TPA will apply because the original agreement was signed on June 30, 2007, but the law on TPA (19 U.S.C. 2191-2194 and 3803-3805) states, inter alia, that it will cover trade agreements "entered into" by the President before July 1, 2007. Thus, it appears that whether TPA applies to the KORUS will rest entirely on whether the 2010 changes on autos, beef, etc. mean that the agreement wasn't "entered into" until now. The changes announced to the FTA - especially those affecting the countries' previously-agreed tariff schedules - almost certainly constitute substantive changes to the agreement, so I'm having a very hard time figuring out how someone can seriously argue that TPA will apply - i.e., that the agreement wasn't substantively modified such that it must be re-signed and "entered into" again. [Note: USTR is calling this a "supplemental agreement," so maybe they're going to spin this as outside the original agreement, but that seems like a pretty hard sell considering that specific tariff lines, present in the original agreement, have been changed by the 2010 pact.]
And trust me, this is no small matter - if TPA doesn't apply, then all of its important procedural limitations - short timelines, limited committee consideration, no amendments, etc. - don't apply. And, as I discussed a few weeks ago, TPA effectively prevents a few powerful congressmen or senators from singlehandedly derailing the deal (through procedural maneuvers, "poison pill" amendments and other nasty things)....
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