US Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that he sees a “less than even chance” that the US Congress would approve the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact before the next administration takes office in January.
Biden, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said that the brief “lame duck” session of US Congress after the Nov. 8 presidential election was “our only real shot” of approving the TPP.
The sweeping trade deal has been a central plank in US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy shift to counter the rising economic and military might of China, and has been broadly supported by US business interests, but it is opposed by both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, who have blamed trade deals for US job losses.
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has said the TPP would not get a Senate vote this year, and US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has said he does not see enough votes for it to pass.
As prospects that the 12-nation deal could be ratified in Washington this year have dimmed, a Vietnamese lawmaker on Wednesday said that Hanoi would delay ratifying the TPP until after the US elections.
Vietnam, which stands to gain enormously from the trade deal that spans 40 percent of the world’s economy, had set a July target to approve it, according to the government’s Web site, but Dung Trung Quoc, a member of the National Assembly, said the deal would not be discussed in the next parliamentary session that opens on Oct. 20 and runs until mid-November.
“The important issue here is to find a proper time to discuss and ratify the trade deal. Everybody knows that the US is the most important member in this deal and the country is in the middle of an election,” he said.
“Therefore, Vietnam pushing back the discussion of [the] TPP is only normal,” he said, adding that the pact still has the full support of lawmakers.
Comments on the National Assembly’s Web site confirmed that the TPP ratification would be delayed.
The TPP, which excludes economic powerhouse China, must be ratified by all the participating nations.
Additional reporting by AFP
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