Washington DC – The National Foreign Trade Council congratulates the Senate for passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation and urges swift conference committee action.
“The Senate deserves to be congratulated on passing TPA legislation,” said Bill Reinsch, President of the National Foreign Trade Council. “This legislation is vitally important to American firms, workers, farmers and consumers because is it will enable the President to negotiate trade agreements to open markets for U.S. goods, services and agriculture. The Senate action today is another major milestone towards reestablishing American leadership on trade. Now we need to move quickly to get the job done,” stated Reinsch.
“We urge the House and Senate to quickly convene a conference committee and complete its action as soon as possible,” Reinsch said. “On the whole, the bill is a very good one. We do have some concerns with certain amendments and hope they will be fixed during conference. In particular, the NFTC strongly opposes the Dayton-Craig amendment. Getting it out of the final legislation is a priority because it would torpedo the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. We cannot remove key issues from the negotiation and expect that others won’t do the same thing to us on our key issues.”
“With the Doha Round, FTAA, and important bilateral free trade agreement negotiations now underway, it is more critical than ever that Congress get this legislation to the President’s desk as soon as possible,” said Reinsch. “TPA is essential to a forward-looking trade agenda. The success of U.S. farmers, businesses, workers and consumers in the global marketplace is at stake. If the U.S. wants to get the economy back on track, we need TPA.”