Obama: Rejecting trade deal puts U.S. "at a disadvantage"

Ahead of a fight in Congress over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), President Obama is launching a campaign extolling the benefits of the newly minted free-trade deal.

"With this Trans-Pacific Partnership, we are writing the rules for the global economy," the president said Saturday in a new video. "Our workers will be the ones who get ahead. Our businesses will get a fair deal. And those who oppose passing this new trade deal are really just accepting a status quo that everyone knows puts us at a disadvantage."

The United States' five-year-long negotiations with 11 other countries concluded this week, finishing the last touches on a trade pact that would bring together nations responsible for 40 percent of the world's economic output.

But the agreement, which creates a free-trade zone with Pacific Rim countries, faces an uphill battle in Congress before it gets to the president's desk.

Detractors of the deal have decried its implications for intellectual property rights as well as its lack of currency manipulation regulations. It also calls to mind fears of President Clinton's much-maligned North America Free Trade Agreement, which eased the ability of employers to ship out domestic manufacturing jobs to low-wage nations.

The president said that it is "the best possible deal for American workers."

"Right now, other countries can cut their costs by setting lower standards to pay lower wages," Mr. Obama said. TPP will change that, "holding partner countries to higher standards," he said.

It also relaxes taxes other countries have imposed on American goods and services, which the president promised will boost "America's farmers, ranchers, manufacturers and small business owners" and "make it easier for them to sell their products abroad."

"If American businesses can sell more of their products in those markets, they can expand and support good jobs here at home," Mr. Obama said.

Despite the benefits the president extolled, it's a deal that members of his own party can't agree to: On Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced that she was "not in favor" of TPP, even after she urged on the free trade deal as secretary of state.

Other Democratic contenders for the White House also oppose the deal, including former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Instead, the deal's supporters are a collection of strange bedfellows -- Republican leaders, the Obama administration and large corporations like Apple and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer have all thrown their weight behind TPP.

Other critics have also slammed the trade deal over loosened environmental and labor regulations, though the president says TPP includes some of the strongest standards "in history."

And, Mr. Obama argues, it pushes back on the growing influence of China along the Pacific Rim, a key strategic point benefiting the U.S. foreign policy pivot to Asia.

"Without this agreement, competitors that don't share our values, like China, will write the rules of the global economy," the president said. "They'll keep selling into our markets and try to lure companies over there. Meanwhile, they're going to keep their markets closed to us."

The full text of the deal is expected to be released over the coming weeks.

Republicans are aiming their own campaign at Mr. Obama ahead of a looming vote in the Senate to lift a crude oil export ban.

"All the ban is doing now is holding back economic development in every state of our union," Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, said Saturday in a video. "Lift that ban, and we could see close to a million jobs created in just a few years' time."

A bill to dissolve the ban passed in the House on Friday, but the president has already said he wouldn't sign the GOP-backed measure if it passes out of Congress.

The House Agriculture Committee chairman, who believes the nation is currently "in the midst of a crude oil renaissance," pressed Mr. Obama to retract his veto threat.

"The president should and must listen to the American people and help us lift this export ban today," Conaway said.

Job growth, lower prices at gas stations and increasing the availability of oil supplies to foreign allies are all included in the benefits of the bill, the Texas Republican said.

He added: "The energy boom is great to talk about. And it's a great story. But now we have a chance to actually do something big to keep this great American success story going."