Trade Politics and the Fast Track: Impact on Congressional-Presidential Relations

Abstract

Congress and the President share responsibility for trade policy. While Congress has constitutional advantages in controlling trade, the President, through his powers to initiate and administer policy, can counteract these advantages and circumvent Congressional checks on presidential action. Methods for making trade policy—treaty making, executive agreement and fast tracking—bring the President and Congress into very different relationships. Fast tracking is an arrangement between Congress and the President that brings closure to multilateral and bilateral trade agreements without burdening the agreement with Congressional amendments. Under fast tracking, the President shapes trade policy from beginning to end; the Congress, which only has input through its elite trade committees, only can accept or reject such policy, without altering it. This makes fast tracking the latest and in some ways the most critical mechanism of presidential dominance in trade policy. Such a process has policy implications for members of Congress and threatens to change how Congresspersons govern and represent their constituencies. By altering the extent to which a member of Congress can shape trade policy, fast tracking potentially frustrates legislative representation, reduces Congress to a passive institution of response, and thus poses a major challenge to the traditional relationship between the President and Congress.