Obama pleased after Senate passes trade deals

Washington: US President Barack Obama has welcomed the decision of the Senate to move forward on his ambitious trade deals, saying its absence would make American businesses and workers disadvantageous. Obama said he shares the values of Democratic critics who worry that any trade deal will be detrimental to American workers while warning that blocking a trade deal will be bad for the US. [caption id=“attachment_2245682” align=“alignleft” width=“259”] President Obama. AP[/caption] “I want to congratulate the Senate on moving forward on providing me the authority to not only strike a smart, progressive growth-promoting trade deal with some of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region and potentially in Europe as well, but also to give me the tools to enforce those agreements, which haven’t always happened in the past,”  Obama said yesterday. “I think it is the right one not just for big US businesses, but also for small US businesses and medium-size US businesses and most importantly, ultimately American workers,” he said. Obama said it is his firm belief that despite the problems of previous trade deals, that US is better off writing high- standard rules with strong, enforceable provisions on things like child labor or deforestation or environmental degradation or wildlife trafficking or intellectual property and that the US is better off writing those rules for what is going to be the largest, fastest-growing market in the world. “And if we don’t, China will and other countries will. And our businesses will be disadvantaged. And our workers will ultimately suffer. In terms of some of the fears of outsourcing jobs, it is my belief, based on the analysis, that at this point if there was a company in the US that was looking for low-cost labor, they have no problem outsourcing under the current regime,” Obama said. “So what we do have the opportunity to do is to attract back companies to manufacture here in the US. We are seeing some of that happen,” he said. The Senate passed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, approving the legislation by 78-20 votes. PTI