Wall Street Journal (Editorial)
June 10, 2015
A
big free-trade vote is headed for the House floor as soon as Friday,
and opponents have launched a honeypot operation to ply the
dumber or more partisan Republicans into defeating the bill.
Protectionists on the right claim that President Obama can’t be trusted,
and their last gasp is to claim the bill includes secret new
immigration powers that are nowhere in the bill.
This
canard seems to be based on a hacked February 2015 document published
last week by WikiLeaks. This 10-page annex on the “movement
of natural persons” is a draft that may or may not become part of the
Trade in Services Agreement that the Obama Administration is negotiating
with the European Union and 23 other countries. The goal is to
deregulate services like engineering or finance (rather
than goods) across borders—in short, a good, pro-growth idea.
The
annex merely lists negotiating positions and proposals, and they are
entirely notional: The parties may agree, for example, “that
measures relating to entry, temporary stay and work of service
providers are administered in a reasonable, objective and transparent
manner.”
Protectionists
say the mere existence of this annex reveals that Mr. Obama will use
his trade promotion powers to sneak his immigration
preferences through Congress. But keep in mind that none of this is
even in the bill the House is considering this week. The current
trade-promotion bill merely says that any deal Mr. Obama negotiates will
get an up or down vote in Congress.
Congress
is not giving up its right to reject a bad trade deal, and the
fast-track bill includes a procedure that allows either chamber
to “strip” trade promotion authority if the executive branch does not
follow certain rules or attempts to cut out Congress. The House is even
adding an amendment that bans any Administration from submitting trade
deals that change immigration policy.
Mr.
Obama is a short timer who will be gone in January 2017. The next
President may be a Republican who will want the same trade authority,
but Democrats will block it if the GOP loses the Senate in 2016. Better
to pass it now as a demonstration of the GOP’s ability to govern and of
its pro-growth agenda—as well as a repudiation of the paranoid style of
its protectionist wing.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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