Trade Promotion Authority (TPA or Fast-Track Negotiating Authority) is not an executive power grab. It is a compact between the legislative and executive branches, which each have distinct authorities under the Constitution when it comes to conducting trade policy. The purpose of forging such a compact is that negotiations would be impracticable – and likely interminable – if each provision were subject to the whims of 535 legislators.
Opponents of trade liberalization have smeared TPA as a wholesale capitulation to the president, who allegedly is freed of any congressional oversight and given a blank check to negotiate unamendable trade deals in secret without any input from Congress – only the capacity to vote up or down on the final deal. In reality, though, TPA is the vehicle through which Congress conveys its trade policy objectives, conditions, and demands to the president, who negotiates with those parameters in mind. Provided the president concludes a negotiation that abides those congressional parameters, the deal is given fast track consideration, which means essentially that legislative procedures are streamlined and expedited.
The trade committees are reportedly close to introducing trade promotion authority legislation, although there remains some debate about what it should include. Enforceable provisions to discipline currency manipulation would be a bad idea, as would be including provisions to reauthorize the ineffective and misguided Trade Adjustment Assistance program (which is widely acknowledged to be a payoff to organized labor).
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/congress-should-decide-whether-trade-agreements-abide-terms-trade-promotion-authority
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