International Trade committee  Absolutely. That's going to happen in virtually every agreement.

International Trade committee  They need their permission. It depends on what the constitutional issue is. But for the most part, they have to get the permission of the states.

International Trade committee  I'm not a lawyer but I understand that issue is not crystal clear. It's not one that the federal government has ever been prepared to take to the Supreme Court.

International Trade committee  It should have been done much earlier, because normally they do it earlier.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  They usually get trade promotion authority periodically, and it lasts for a period of five years or so. They take a period of time and they negotiate the various agreements under the TPA. If you go back, I think to 2007, they had a bipartisan consensus on basic issues they wanted

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  No, usually if they have TPA, it's an up-and-down deal.

International Trade committee  The last one that was done like that was the Kennedy Round.

International Trade committee  In the Kennedy Round, the issue the Americans had was that they had what they called an American selling price system of valuation for chemicals and they were supposed to trade it away. Congress withdrew it during the approval period, so it upset the balance. In order to go into

International Trade committee  Well, they're bigger. They're bigger and they can do these things. That's really the reality. We need the Americans to get a deal with Europe so we can get better access to Europe in terms of cumulating our content. When we're dealing with Japan, we started out first, and hopeful

International Trade committee  Not here!

International Trade committee  Oh no, I was giving an example.

International Trade committee  It's not truly free—there are still subsidies and regulatory differences.

International Trade committee  That's a fair description.