I hadn’t thought of that good question also can’t the President do it with a signing statement or something similar like what was done with Nafta?
NAFTA was fast tracked. I have been doing some research on fast-tracking at:
http://www.fasttrackhistory.org/index.html
I haven’t completed reading, but it looks like congress ceded much of its authority to the executive branch regarding fast track treaties. Prior to fast track, the executive branch only negotiated re tariffs.
Fast track negotiation included non-tariff items, including, but not limited to “increased monopoly protections for pharmaceutical companies, allowed foreign corporations to skirt U.S. courts to sue the U.S. government for cash compensation, or required Congress to conform wide swaths of law unrelated to trade to its terms”, eventually including changes to immigration (guest worker visas). It also changed the rules regarding congress participation in treaty negotiations pretty much minimizing/negating it.
It even looks like (I haven’t completed reading), if the executive signed a treaty, congress had both limited time and ability to act on it or by default the treaty ‘passed’.
Fast track was used to back-door in many domestic changes deemed “necessary to compete in a global market place”.
per the book:
“Since Congress first approved it in 1974 (it was signed into law the following year), Fast Track has been passed on five additional occasions. It has been employed 13 times among the hundreds of U.S. commercial agreements completed since the mid 1970s. Fast Track enabled passage of the most controversial commercial pacts, such as the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations that established the World Trade Organization (WTO), and also the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).2”