In the last few years, the United States has considered bilateral and regional free trade areas (FTAs) with a number of trading partners. Such arrangements are not new in U.S. trade policy. The United States has had a free trade arrangement with Israel since 1985 and with Canada since 1989. The latter was suspended when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that included the United States, Canada, and Mexico went into effect in January 1994. U.S. interest in bilateral and regional free trade arrangements surged, and the Bush Administration accelerated the pace of negotiations after the enactment of the Trade Promotion Authority in August 2002. U.S. participation in free trade agreements can occur only with the concurrence of Congress. In addition, FTAs affect the U.S. economy, with the impact varying across sectors. The 112 th Congress and the Obama Administration faced the question of whether and when to act on three pending FTAs—with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Although the Bush Administration signed these agreements, it and the leaders of the 110 th Congress could not reach agreement on proceeding to enact them. No action was taken during the 111 th Congress either. In addition, the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) expired on July 1, 2007, meaning that any new FTAs agreed to would not likely receive expedited legislative consideration, unless the authority is renewed. After discussion with congressional leaders and negotiations with the governments of Colombia, Panama, and South Korea to assuage congressional concerns regarding treatment of union officials (Colombia), taxation regimes (Panama), and trade in autos (South Korea), President Obama submitted draft implementing legislation to Congress on October 3, 2011. The 112 th Congress approved each of the bills in successive votes on October 12, along with legislation to renew an aspect of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. In the meantime, on November 14, 2009, President Obama committed to work with the current and prospective partners to form the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. The TPP is a free trade agreement that includes nations on both sides of the Pacific. The TPP grew out of an FTA that included Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. Besides the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Vietnam have also joined the negotiations. Furthermore, the United States is negotiating with the European Union to form the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). FTAs raise some important policy issues: Do FTAs serve or impede U.S. long-term national interests and trade policy objectives? Which type of an FTA arrangement meets U.S. national interests? What should U.S. criteria be in choosing FTA partners? Are FTAs a substitute for or a complement to U.S. commitments and interests in promoting a multilateral trading system via the World Trade Organization (WTO)? What effect will the expiration of TPA have on the future of FTAs as a trade policy strategy? This report will monitor pending and possible proposals for U.S. FTAs, relevant legislation, and other 113 th Congress interest in U.S. FTAs. Free trade areas are part of the broad category of trade arrangements under which member-countries grant one another preferential treatment in trade. Preferential trade arrangements include the following: free trade areas (FTAs), under which member countries agree to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers on trade in goods within the FTA, but each country maintains its own trade policies, including tariffs on trade outside the region; customs unions , in which members conduct free trade among themselves and maintain common tariffs and other trade policies outside the arrangement; common markets , in which member countries go beyond a customs union by eliminating barriers to labor and capital flows across national borders within the market; and economic unions , where members merge their economies even further by establishing a common currency, and therefore a unified monetary policy, along with other common economic institutions. The European Union is the most significant example of a group of countries that has gone from a customs union to an economic union. The process of forming an FTA usually begins with discussions between trading partners to ascertain the feasibility of forming an FTA. If they agree to go forward, then the countries undertake negotiations on what the FTA would look like. At a minimum, participants in an FTA agree to eliminate tariffs and some other nontariff trade barriers and agree to do so over a specific time period. In addition, the partner countries usually agree on rules of origin, that is, a definition of what constitutes a product manufactured within the FTA and, therefore, one that is eligible to receive duty-free and other preferential trade treatment. Rules of origin prevent products from nonmembers entering an FTA market over the lowest tariff wall. Most FTAs also include procedures on the settlement of disputes arising among members and rules on the implementation of border controls, such as product safety certification and sanitary and phytosanitary requirements. Most recent FTAs contain rules on economic activities besides trade in goods, including foreign investment, intellectual property rights protection, treatment of labor and environment, and trade in services. The size and complexity of the FTA will largely reflect the size and complexity of the economic relations among the participating countries. U.S. FTAs with Israel and Jordan are relatively basic, while the NAFTA (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) is very complex. Countries form free trade areas for a number of economic and political reasons. Most basically, by eliminating tariffs and some nontariff barriers, FTAs permit the products of FTA partners easier access to one another's markets. The 1989 FTA between the United States and Canada was formed arguably for this purpose. Developed countries have also formed FTAs with developing countries to encourage them toward trade and investment liberalization. FTAs may be used to protect local exporters from losing out to foreign companies that might receive preferential treatment under other FTAs. For example, some supporters of the U.S.-Chile FTA argued that U.S. firms were at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their Canadian competitors whose exports face no Chilean tariffs under the Canada-Chile FTA. Slow progress in multilateral negotiations has been another impetus for FTAs. For example, when the 1986-1994 Uruguay Round negotiations got bogged down, the impetus for the United States, Mexico, and Canada to form NAFTA seemed to increase. Arguably, the surge in FTA formation worldwide in the past few years has been a result of the difficulties encountered in launching and implementing the Doha Development Agenda round of negotiations in the WTO. Political considerations are also a motivation to form FTAs. The United States formed FTAs with Israel and with Jordan to reaffirm American support of those countries and to strengthen relations with them. Post-World War II trade policy under various presidential administrations has had several interrelated objectives. One has been to secure open markets for U.S. exports. A second has been to protect domestic producers from foreign unfair trade practices and from rapid surges in fairly traded imports. A third has been to control trade for foreign policy and national security reasons. A fourth objective has been to help foster global trade to promote world economic growth. In fulfilling these objectives, U.S. political leaders have formed and conducted trade policy along three tracks. One track has been the use of multilateral negotiations to establish and develop a rules-based trading system. The United States was a major player in the development and signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947. It was a leader in nine rounds of negotiations that have expanded the coverage of GATT and that led to the establishment in 1995 of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the body that administers the GATT and other multilateral trade agreements. The United States has continued this approach as a leader in the latest round—the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). U.S. policy makers have used a second track, which can be labeled the "unilateral" track. Under this approach, the United States threatens retaliation, usually in the form of restricting trade partners' access to the vast U.S. market, in order to get the partner to open its markets to U.S. exports or to cease other offensive commercial practices and policies. The United States has employed this approach primarily against foreign practices not covered by GATT/WTO rules or because the multilateral dispute settlement process proved too slow and ineffective to meet U.S. needs. For several decades, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, the United States conducted its trade policy with Japan "unilaterally" to get Japan to amend domestic laws, regulations, and practices that prevented U.S. exporters from securing what they considered to be a fair share of the Japanese market. More and more, however, U.S. trade policy is becoming dominated by a third track—bilateral and regional negotiations to establish FTAs. The United States completed its first FTA with Israel in 1985 under President Reagan. It completed its second with Canada in 1989 under President Bush, whose Administration was involved in the process of expanding it to Mexico, a process that was completed by the Clinton Administration in 1993. However, even after the completion of NAFTA, it was still unclear whether bilateral and regional FTAs had become a fixture in U.S. foreign trade policymaking or anomalies to cement already strong economic relationships. By 1994 it seemed apparent that FTAs were indeed becoming a fixture when the United States, under the Clinton Administration, led a group of trade ministers from 33 other Western Hemispheric countries in agreeing to work toward establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005.