Obama Ready To Move On South Korea Trade Deal

Reuters reports:

President Barack Obama will soon send a free trade pact with South Korea to Congress for approval despite Republican threats to vote against it because of a retraining program for workers displaced by trade, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley said on Thursday.

"There is no time to waste fighting politics as usual," Daley said in a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the U.S.-Korea Business Council. "If we do not act before the August recess, American business will suffer."

Obama faces a showdown with Republicans over his insistence that an extension of the nearly 50-year-old Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) retraining program be passed along with the Korea pact and two other pending free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama.

Republicans have objected to Obama's plan to insert the TAA program into the implementing bill for the South Korea agreement, insisting that lawmakers be allowed to vote separately on the TAA and the trade pact.

The White House believes both could pass separately.