reply to post by baseball101
Well, first off, this isn't a bill in Congress, so it's sort of a moot point to talk about Congressional approval. Obama hasn't, to my knowledge,
pushed, pulled, nudged or otherwise encouraged this treaty negociation.
I suppose it implies his consent that he hasn't recalled the US from the negociation table. But at this point in time, that's all that's going on,
the Office of the United States Trade Representative has a member, or members of its agency off somewhere, sitting at a table with other sorts of
trade agency reps from other nations, talking about the verbage of a treaty to the ends of preventing fake products from being sold internationally.
Sometime during the negociations, the debated verbage expanded to possibly include other sorts of IP infringement.
Now, they haven't even agreed on what to say, let alone, signed off on it. And even if they had, it would still have to go to the various governments
for consideration. So Ron Kirk, or someone else from the US agency, would then go to Obama and say, "Hey, look at this, tell me what you think, is
this something we want to do?"
I don't know how trade agreements get finalized, does it only take presidental approval? Or does it go before congress? Either way, this ACTA thing
isn't there yet.