Tea Party May Throw Kink Into GOP Trade Policies
By Ryan Davis
Law360, New York (November 03, 2010) — In the past, a sweeping election win for Republicans reliably translated into wide support for free trade measures. That may not be the case after Tuesday’s election results, lawyers say, because the Tea Party movement that powered the GOP to victory is largely an unknown commodity when it comes to trade and may be hostile to the traditional GOP agenda on the issue.
Congress has gotten relatively little done on the international trade front since President Barack Obama took office, but the Republican gains and divided legislature brought about by the election will likely push trade even further down on the congressional agenda, attorneys say.
While the new leaders in the House, including presumptive House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., have a track record of supporting free trade policies, the freshman class of Tea Party-backed Republican representatives could be far less supportive, though their positions on trade are still largely unknown, lawyers say.
The conservative rhetoric in this year’s election was fueled by populist anger about the economy and fear about the threat open trade policies pose to American jobs, lawyers say.
“It’s interesting, you would expect a high number of additional Republicans would translate into additional support for free trade,” said Behnam Dayanim, a partner at Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP. “But we’re not in normal times.”
Nevertheless, few of the newly elected Republican representatives have extensive background in trade or ran on an explicitly trade-based platform, so it is difficult to guess how they will vote, said Russell L. Smith, special counsel at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
Given the economic climate and the circumstances of the election, Smith said it’s possible the freshman GOP lawmakers will be inclined to support protectionist trade policies to curry favor with constituents.
That could create tension with House leaders who are more supportive of free trade and lead to a “battle for the soul of the Republican Party,” Smith said. Whether the leadership will be able to wrangle the votes to pass legislation in support of free trade “is a big unknown,” he added.
Dayanim said he could envision a scenario in which Tea Party Republicans and liberal members of Congress who support more protectionist policies form an unusual coalition to oppose some pieces of free trade legislation.
Republicans who are skeptical of free trade “will have to do a delicate straddle on this issue because their corporate supporters like those policies just fine,” said Stanley J. Marcuss, a partner with Bryan Cave LLP.
“It’s a peculiar time,” said Mitchell S. Fuerst, managing partner at Fuerst Ittleman PL. “There are rules we thought we knew about Democrats and Republicans, but new rules are getting written.”
Any ideological schism between Republicans of different stripes will only become visible when trade legislation comes up for a vote, but many lawyers say they don’t expect trade to be a significant part of the agenda in the new Congress.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think trade will be a priority issue,” said Ashley W. Craig, a partner at Venable LLP. “The Republicans in the House have said they will focus on financial issues and repealing health care reform, so trade may get caught in the crossfire and fall victim to a further lack of consideration.”
Thompson Hine LLP partner David Christy said he doesn’t see any way for the newly elected Congress to score political points by pushing potentially unpopular free trade measures that may just get vetoed by the president anyway.
“Given the state of the economy, it won’t be a golden age for free trade,” he said.
One litmus test for how the new Congress will handle trade issues will be how it addresses the three pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The U.S. signed the deals years ago, but they still require approval by both houses of Congress.
There has been little action so far during the Obama administration about getting the agreements approved by Congress, although the U.S. and Korea are seeking to finalize details of the plan in advance of next week’s G20 meeting in Seoul.
Jennifer Choe Groves, a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP, said the free trade agreements “might provide an opportunity for cooperation between the White House and Congress.”
She said that even with the unknown quantity of the Tea Party’s stance on trade and the fact that Obama has voiced support for getting the deals approved, she’s optimistic the House, if not the Senate, could vote to implement the trade deals.
“Passage of the free trade agreements would be good for the country,” she said. “I don’t think the Republicans would vote against them just to spite Obama.”
Craig was less certain that the House GOP leaders would have the appetite for a vote on trade deals that conservative new members could portray as aiding foreign countries at the expense of American jobs.
“The big question is whether they want to tackle something that could blow up in their face,” he said.
Still, Craig said, Republican leaders inclined to seek a less risky approach to supporting free trade and set themselves apart on trade issues could issue statements putting pressure on the administration to begin negotiating new free trade agreements with other trading partners.
As it has for the past several years, China will be the focus of most trade-related policy and discussion, and legislators on both sides of the aisle could ramp up anti-China rhetoric, Dayanim said, and even seek to strip away some favorable trade provisions the country now enjoys.
“I suspect China is going to be an even bigger bogeyman for many members of Congress than it has been in the past,” he said.
Smith said that although the new Republican leaders have pledged to tackle the very difficult task of fixing the economy first, if they become frustrated in that effort, they may find it politically expedient to capitalize on public suspicion of China and by imposing punitive trade measures.
Mario Mancuso, a partner at Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP, said that ultimately U.S. policy toward China may not change much under the new Congress, but in terms of public comments about Chinese policies, “there will be more fireworks.”
While Democrats retained control of the Senate, they now have a slimmer margin that could open the door for passage of free trade measures, lawyers say. Free trade proponents are also encouraged by the election of Republican Rob Portman, a former U.S. trade representative in the George W. Bush administration, to a Senate seat in Ohio.
Some parts of Obama’s trade agenda could be significantly hampered by the Republican victory, Mancuso said.
For one, the administration has placed a high priority on reform of the country’s Cold War-era export control system, a plan that requires congressional approval for some measures, but not others.
While export control reform is not typically viewed as a partisan issue, the aspects that need a vote by the legislative branch may run up against the same skepticism about free trade that could hinder other policies, he said.
Members of Congress who oppose the plan could also slow down parts of the process that don’t need a vote by requiring members of the administration to testify more frequently and answer more questions about the project, he said.
The election may also have brought the Obama administration’s efforts to open trade with Cuba, such as relaxing regulations on family travel and some exports, to a screeching halt, Mancuso said.
That’s because Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Florida Republican who strongly supports the embargo, is expected to become new chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which handles most Cuba-related legislation.
“To the extent that there was a mini-trend toward easing up on the embargo, that mini-trend stopped last night,” Mancuso said.