US President Barack Obama is risking a revolt within his own party as he presses ahead on a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea, setting the stage for a showdown after November legislative elections.
Organized labor, a critical support base for Obama’s Democratic Party, and several Democrats have already vowed to fight the deal which they say would hurt workers.
“To try and advance the Korean FTA when so many workers are still struggling to find work would simply move our economy backward,” said Representative Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who leads the powerful Rules Committee.
The deal would be the largest for the US since the the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico in 1994.
The US and South Korea completed painstaking negotiations in 2007, but neither nation’s legislature has ratified it.
Obama himself criticized the deal as a senator. But as president, Obama has found South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to be one of his closest allies and has said he is convinced of the benefits of boosting trade with Asia’s fourth largest economy.
“It will strengthen our commercial ties and create enormous potential economic benefits and create jobs here in the United States, which is my No. 1 priority,” Obama said in Toronto.
Obama said he would send the agreement to Congress soon after November — the month of a G20 summit in South Korea as well as congressional elections in which Democrats are seen as vulnerable to losses.
Ironically, the rival Republican Party, while opposed to many of Obama’s key priorities such as climate and immigration legislation, may offer greater support than Democrats on the South Korea free trade agreement.
“Before the midterm elections, he cannot submit this to Congress. It’s impossible,” said Anthony Kim, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.
“But after the election, there will be a new set of minds. It will be an uphill battle — there is no doubt about that — but I think it may come to life next year,” he said.
Sabina Dewan, associate director of international economic policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said that any trade deal would be controversial at a time when the wobbly US economy is voters’ top concern.
However, she noted that Obama has set a goal of doubling US exports as a way to fuel growth and that, in a globalized economy, the US risked being left behind.
“Given the domestic climate and the challenges that President Obama is facing right now, he would not have picked this battle if he didn’t truly believe in the merits of it,” she said.
“Of course, any time you have a new trade agreement you have a restructuring of economic activity, which means that some people will be better off while others will have to adjust to change,” she said.
Former Democratic president Bill Clinton championed NAFTA despite staunch opposition from many in his party who have argued, then and now, that it has encouraged manufacturers to shift jobs to Mexico in search of cheaper labor.
Opposition to the South Korea deal has focused more on specific sectors, with legislators seeking more access for US autos and beef.
Beef is particularly sensitive for Lee after South Koreans held major street protests in 2008 charging that the US imports were unsafe. South Korea has resisted renegotiating any of the deal.
For South Korean policymakers, free trade is seen as a crucial strategy to boost the competitiveness of an economy lying between giants Japan and China. Seoul has also pursued trade pacts with the EU and India.
Han Duk-soo, the South Korean ambassador to Washington, said he has met with 35 — or more than one-third — of US senators and 135 House members to promote the deal which he argued would create some 72,000 US jobs.
Han last week joined three Democrats and three Republicans who set up a caucus in Congress in support of the deal.
“For three years, Congress and the White House have wrung their hands while this no-cost job creation measure sits cooling on the dinner table,” said one of the members, Republican Representative Peter Roskam of Illinois.
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