U.S. technology companies, banks and farmers are among the biggest beneficiaries of falling tariffs that are part of the trade deal designed to liberate commerce among 12 Pacific Rim nations, according to a text of the agreement released Thursday.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will affect almost 40 percent of the global economy, maintains protection for a handful of politically sensitive U.S. industries by keeping existing tariffs in place for as long as 30 years for pickup trucks and 13 years for some types of footwear.
The text released Thursday, after negotiations wrapped up last month, includes thousands of tariffs that affect a broad variety of U.S.-made products from Harley-Davidson motorcycles sold in Malaysia to toilet seats shipped to Vietnam.
“We do see pretty widespread benefits across the economy,” said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.
Release of the TPP text starts the clock ticking for ratification by the 12 Pacific Rim nations involved.
In the U.S., that means a 90-day notice to Congress and at least a 60-day public review period before a vote by lawmakers, which probably will come no sooner than March. With the publication, supporters and critics now have fodder for their arguments.
The Trans-Pacific pact is the biggest trade deal the U.S. has negotiated since the North American Free Trade Agreement and stands as an achievement for President Barack Obama, who has been working to reassert U.S. influence in the Pacific region.
Although China is not among the signatories, the accord reflects one of the main points of friction between the world’s two biggest economies by requiring the participating countries to outlaw theft of trade secrets, explicitly including thefts through computer hacking.
After massive breaches of commercial and government databases in recent years, U.S. trade officials say they hope the rules not only will deter hacking from within the 12 TPP countries but also set an international precedent that becomes a norm in agreements with other countries, eventually including China.
Along with Canada, Mexico and Chile, the other countries joining with the U.S. are Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
Froman and the rest of the administration now must try to win over Democrats who are wary of the impact on U.S. jobs and Republicans who are reluctant to back a Democratic White House in an election year. Most Republicans, though, have generally backed free trade.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who supported giving Obama the power to fast-track negotiations on the accord, said the public will have a chance to scrutinize the text before Congress votes on it.
“I remain hopeful that our negotiators reached an agreement that the House can support because a successful TPP would mean more good jobs for American workers and greater U.S. influence in the world,” Ryan said in a statement Thursday.
Obama’s toughest task may be lobbying members of his party. Only 28 of 188 Democrats in the House voted to give the president fast-track negotiating authority to push the trade talks along.
Obama said in a post on that “the rules of global trade” disadvantage American companies and workers and that the Pacific trade deal “will change that.”
The deal, he said, “will boost Made-in-America exports abroad while supporting higher-paying jobs right here at home. And that’s going to help our economy grow.”
The TPP eventually will lower all tariffs among its member countries on all goods to zero. Eighty percent of imports the U.S. from the 11 other countries already are brought in without tariffs, and goods subject to tariffs are hit with a levy that averages 1.4 percent. The deal also addresses regulations and practices known as non-tariff trade barriers, which are ways countries protect industries.
Critics, such as the consumer group Public Citizen, said the agreement will make it easier to send jobs overseas and increase income inequity in the U.S. by driving down wages of low-skilled employees who will face more competition from those paid far less in Vietnam and Malaysia.
