Hoeven links pending trade deals to job creation, debt reduction

Republicans in their weekly address urged President Obama to submit pending free trade deals to Congress partly as a way to deal with the national debt.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) argued on Saturday that the pending deals with Colombia, South Korea and Panama will create jobs and that will contribute to deficit reduction. 

“Almost exactly one hundred years ago, at the start of another century, President Theodore Roosevelt launched a U.S. Navy mission known as the Great White Fleet on a voyage around the world. It was a show of American strength, but it was also a show of American goodwill and prosperity,” Hoeven said. “We need to build on the legacy of President Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet by ratifying these free trade agreements, so that instead of a debt, we can leave our children a bright, dynamic future."

The more workers are employed the more the government can collect in taxes.

“Free and fair trade agreements can help us create the kind of pro-jobs, pro-growth economy that will lift our nation up,” he said.

“Good fiscal control and a legal tax, and regulatory environment that promotes private investment and business innovation, can help us to create jobs, grow our economy, and reduce our deficit,” Hoeven added.

Obama has said he will not submit the three deals, completed in 2007, until an agreement can be reached on expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance. The benefits for workers who can show they were displaced due to a free trade agreement were extended temporarily to service workers under the 2009 stimulus deal. The expanded version expired on Feb. 13.

“All of these agreements have been languishing for years, but with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, and a spiraling deficit, the president can no longer hold these agreements back,” Hoeven said.

He said that TAA should be linked to the renewal of fast-track trade negotiating authority “as it generally has been in the past since 1974.” 

Fast-track authority expired in 2007 so any new trade deals such as the TransPacific Partnership negotiated outside fast-track could be amended by Congress.

Such a possibility makes trading partners wary of concluding deals with an Office of U.S. Trade Representative that does not enjoy fast-track powers.

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