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Rick Manning: Obama's Paris Climate Treaty Spells Doom for TPP
Howard Richman, 12/1/2015

Writing for The Hill (Obama's Paris Climate Treaty Spells Doom for TPP), Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government argued that Obama's Paris treaty spells doom for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

He begins by noting that Obama plans to enforce the climate treaty without bringing it before the Senate. He asks how Obama plans to accomplish this:

Why is the lame-duck Obama emboldened to flout the Constitution on this landmark treaty?

The answer lies in Congress's attempt to force the president to bring his Iran deal to the Senate for ratification. When Republicans decided to "assert their authority" by passing legislation requiring that Obama submit the nuclear deal to Congress in a form that could only be rejected if a two-thirds majority in both chambers were willing to override his veto, the seeds were sown for Obama's complete disregard for constitutional treaty powers.

His prediction of how things will play out is quite interesting:

There can be little doubt that Obama plans on using the Trans-Pacific Partnership governance as the means to enforce whatever he agrees to in Paris on the U.S. all the while our trade partners will ignore it, with the threat of international trade sanctions imposed against the United States should Congress or a future president roll back his agenda.

It is also clear that Obama intends to force a ponderous federal court battle over whether the Paris treaty should be subjected to Senate ratification, buying him time to move forward with a regulatory agenda designed to meet the terms of the non-ratified agreement.

Given the likelihood that the TPP governance board (which consists of one vote for each of the 12 countries who are currently participating) will act to enforce the Paris climate treaty against the U.S. (but not themselves) for noncompliance during a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders presidency regardless of the will of Congress, the vote on TPP will become the proxy for Obama's climate agenda.

We hope that Manning's analysis of how things will play out is correct. If TPP is rejected by Congress, it will be possible for the U.S. to pursue a balanced trade policy that would restore American economic growth and continue American power.