by Our Foreign Desk

THE US Senate was set to allow fast-track negotiations on the Transpacific Trade Pact (TPP) yesterday.

Senators defied a House of Representatives decision on June 12 to vote in favour by 60-37 in the procedural stage of the Bill on Tuesday. It was the minimum margin needed.

The Bill would give President Barack Obama trade promotion authority (TPA) to negotiate the proposed trade pact — similar to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — without having to ask Congress for step-by-step approval.

Supporters argue that TPA is needed to give other nations confidence in the US’s negotiating position, which would be impossible if Congress could block particular agreements.

Congress would be presented with a take-it-or-leave-it treaty to approve or reject Mr Obama, Republican legislators and big business claim that TPP is vital for US exports and that opponents have exaggerated the disastrous results of previous trade deals.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest welcomed the vote.

“With bipartisan support from Congress,” he said, fast-track powers would help the US “write the rules of the road and ensure that our new global economy will be constructed to allow more hard-working Americans to compete and win.”

TPP is being negotiated between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the US.

In an echo of anger at the EU-US deal TTIP, trade unions and other groups oppose aspects of TPP which they say will end workers’ rights and reduce safety and environmental standards to the lowest common denominator.

Under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses, companies from one signatory nation would be able to sue the governments of any of them if their policies negatively affected actual or even potential profits.

Some critics have argued that TPP would undermine national sovereignty, obliging countries to change their laws and limit public spending in line with the pact’s rules.