Chuck Grassley: “I am happy to bring to my colleagues the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. This is a bill…”

“I am happy to bring to my colleagues the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. This is a bill that Congress must pass to actually implement what has been negotiated as the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement. This is under the process that we call trade promotion authority. This is a process by which Congress, which has the constitutional power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, has delegated negotiating authority to the President to negotiate certain trade agreements. But because we have that constitutional authority, we cannot give to the President of the United States the authority to change U.S. law as it might be negotiated. So we are now dealing with legislation that changes U.S. law and makes the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement not a treaty approved just by the Senate of the United States, as we know treaties are, by two-thirds vote, but this is basic law. It has passed the House of Representatives by a majority vote, hopefully it will pass the Senate by a majority vote, and it is to be signed by the President.”