Secretary of State John Kerry might soon be summoned to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership corrupting key elements of a consequential annual department paper.
Lawmakers in a foreign affairs subcommittee hearing on Wednesday blasted this year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report before department officials who claimed to be unable to divulge institutional thinking on country rankings. The information was sought widely by members of the panel and other lawmakers who were invited to the proceedings.
“As you yourself indicated, we don’t discuss the internal deliberations and recommendations of the different parts of the State Department,” Dr. Kari Johnstone, the former acting department human trafficking monitor told the subcommittee chair, Chris Smith (R-N.J.).
“There is a robust discussion, and in the vast majority of cases, we reach consensus at the expert level and discussions don’t go further,” she added.
It is ultimately the responsibility of the Secretary of State to sign off on final rankings, according to the turn-of-the-millennium law that created TIP. Smith, the author of that legislation, said that he believed Malaysia’s Tier 2 ranking was “clearly about TPP dollars.”
When Congress passed the “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority legislation that paved the way for TPP to advance, it forbade Tier 3 countries from entering into expedited trade negotiations with the United States.
“Instead of demanding change from Malaysia, the administration changed our standard to give Malaysia a pass,” Smith said.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said that if Kerry “made the decision, we ought to have him here and ask him.”
“The fact that Secretary Kerry would send you here without instructing you or authorizing you to tell us what really happened gives me all the information that I need,” he told State’s former acting human trafficking monitor.
“I’ve got a Reuters report that Secretary Kerry and the State Department are unwilling to deny,” he also noted, after he repeatedly asked Johnstone, to no avail, for reason to “disbelieve” the article.
According to the wire service, an unusually high number of countries were rated this year based on the say of political appointees and not the recommendations of Johnstone’s former office. In addition to the 2015 TIP conclusion on Malaysia, career officials also reportedly disputed ratings for Cuba, China, and Uzbekistan.
“As we started to do the analysis about who was included and who was excluded, it appears that it goes to the very highest levels within the State Department in them weighing in on who should be on the report and who should not,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said at the onset of the hearing.
Sherman, at one point, asked Johnstone several times to name a non-governmental organization “who says that Malaysia deserves to be in a higher tier than Thailand,” a Tier 3 country, and she did not. Johnstone eventually remarked that “at the end of the day, the Tier ranking is a decision that the Secretary of State makes.”
“And that’s why the Secretary of State ought to have the whatevers to come before Congress and defend this decision, because it puts you in a terrible position,” he said.
After proceedings, Sherman spoke to The Sentinel and said that a request for Kerry to testify “would be the next step,” if Smith decides to further the inquiry.
Sherman, who noted that he is not a member of the subcommittee, also discussed how the Malaysia ranking might complicate the TPP Congressional approval process—the final stage of which is expected in the coming months.
“Wall Street’s very powerful and this will be just one of the obstacles they face,” he said. “It will be hard for us to stop TPP but we’re working on it every day.”
In August, Kerry attempted to refute the Reuters report, saying that Malaysia “has made significant efforts to comply with the minimum standards.”
“Malaysia has passed additional legislation in 2014. They consulted with civil society, drafted amendments to anti-trafficking law in order to allow the country’s flawed victim protection regime to change,” he said, while conceding the country has “a long way to go.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also investigated the 2015 TIP report. Read The Sentinel’s most recent reporting on it here.
