It will need to go to the House, too: Trade agreements these days are typically implemented as congressional-executive agreements rather than as treaties[1]. T

It will need to go to the House, too: Trade agreements these days are typically implemented as congressional-executive agreements rather than as treaties[1]. The underlying legal theory is that modern trade agreements require extensive changes to domestic law and thus must involve the regular legislative process. And so long as the Congress passes a law that implements all of the U.S. obligations under the trade agreement, and the executive agrees to enforce those obligations, our trading partners don't care that there isn't a Constitutionally-defined "treaty". Politically, in addition to avoiding the potentially damaging effects of bypassing the House, passing trade agreements this way give the executive a more credible (and thus powerful) negotiating position, since he doesn't need to be sure of pulling 67 Senators on board. [1] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-896.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-896.pdf