Orrin Hatch: “later today the Senate will once again have an opportunity to vote on whether to renew trade promotion authority. The…”

“later today the Senate will once again have an opportunity to vote on whether to renew trade promotion authority. The Senate has already considered this issue once and the House has voted on it twice, each time demonstrating strong bipartisan support for TPA. My hope is that we can get to a similar result with today's vote in the Senate. We need to be clear about what is at stake. The United States is currently negotiating a number of trade agreements with some of our most important trading partners in the world. If the Senate fails to approve this bill, neither Congress nor the American people will have a strong voice during these negotiations. As a result, our Nation will not be able to get the best trade agreements possible, if we are able to advance any trade agreements at all. Some people, including some of our colleagues, may be fine with that result. They do not think we need trade agreements to promote a healthy economy. But nothing could be further from the truth. As we all know, most of the world's consumers live outside our borders--95 percent of them. In addition, the vast majority of economic growth in the world is likely to occur outside of the United States over the next decade. If our workers, farmers, ranchers, and service providers are going to be able to compete in these growing markets, we must have open access to these markets and fair trade rules to boot. Without strong trade agreements, neither of these is possible.…”