WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama's signature Pacific trade deal seems unlikely to pass Congress before he leaves office in January, with growing opposition in both parties and the rise of anti-trade rhetoric in current presidential campaign, experts said.
While acknowledging the political difficulty in trade, Obama on Tuesday said that he isn' t giving up his push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, a centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda.
"Right now, I'm president and I'm for it, and I think I've got the better argument," Obama said at a White House press conference with visiting Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Obama told reporters that some past U.S. trade deals had not delivered on all the benefits that were promised and had very localized costs, but the U.S. should cut off globalization.
"The answer is, how do we make sure that globalization, technology, automation, those things work for us, not against us? And TPP is designed to do precisely that," he argued.

Obama hoped that the TPP trade deal could still pass during the so-called lame-duck session of Congress after the November general election, the final time window before he leaves White House on Jan. 20. (Xinhua)