This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 25, 2014. I'm Caleb Brown.

The President's record on free trade did not get off to a good start and it's in danger of stagnating completely.

So says Dan Pearson, a senior fellow in trade policy studies at the Cato Institute.

Pearson previously served for 10 years on the U.S. International Trade Commission.

I'm concerned that it's more likely than not that this administration won't be able to accomplish anything more in trade liberalization.

I doubt that they'll be able to get the negotiating authority.

I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not likely to be concluded and the same with the

transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the European Union. The reason for this is that the president ran in 2008 as a

protectionist, you know, opposed, in saying that he would renegotiate the NAFTA.

And a lot of his supporters like that argument.

Then he didn't do anything in his first term except to allow the three agreements to go forward on

Panama, Colombia, and Korea

But now that he's put some effort into negotiating a trans-specific partnership, but he's not built any constituency on the democratic side of the ledger that is willing to support it.

And just recently, we've had both the majority leader of the Senate, Senator Reid, and the ranking

Democrat in the House of Representatives, Minority Leader Pelosi,

come out in opposition to trade promotion authority.

And plus many members of Congress have written to the White House saying don't do this

It's a huge lift for this administration to

Turn that tide and to say no no no despite all these concerns that we're hearing

from members of Congress from organized labor from environmental groups we are going to move forward with this. I mean, I confess. I was very active in trade

debates in the 1990s when we went through the NAFTA and the Uruguay round.

And then the Clinton administration also had gotten a weak start on trade.

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