US AGAINST THEM:

Those observers who think Democrats need to make a clean break with the Obama administration may be about to have their wish come true. in 2015 a long-awaited duo of trade expansion measuers are expected to obtain votes in Congress. The most substantive is the mega-trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It would bind twelve countries--Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam--to a set of measures ranging from tariff reduction to intellectual property protection to restrictions on export subsidies and currency manipulation. But before it is finalized, the administration wants a restoration of "fast-track trade negotiation authority" that will give the deal and up-or-down vote in Congress.

It's fast-track that seems to have created the most immediate Democratic revolt, as noted by the New York Times' Landler and Weisman:

Republicans inclined to give the president trade-negotiating authority are still seething at his executive action deferring deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Many conservatives are in no mood to give Mr. Obama anything, said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and a former United States trade representative in the George W. Bush administration....

Democrats may be the bigger problem. Mr. Froman has met dozens of times with Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction on trade. And Mr. Levin said he wants to work with the administration on the T.P.P., down to the finest details.

But he said he was not about to allow Mr. Obama to negotiate the partnership on his own, then present it to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no opportunity to change it. 

Follow @brothersjudd