By William Mauldin 

The White House and Republican leaders notched a significant victory Wednesday with the Senate's passage of divisive trade legislation, but the win kicks off a grueling, monthslong process to complete a Pacific trade pact that still faces domestic opposition and must win final congressional approval.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the fast-track legislation within days, clearing a negotiating roadblock that prevented officials from moving ahead on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

But even with the enhanced powers and the Senate's subsequent action on Wednesday to advance a related bill on assistance to workers deemed to have been hurt by international trade, multiple challenges remain.

"To say that this is an easy march to victory is a big mistake," said Gary Hufbauer, senior trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which backs trade liberalization. Granting the president fast-track negotiating powers, he said, is merely "the prelude to Act Two of the drama."

The Senate's 60-38 passage of fast-track, which gives the president the power to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote without amendments, capped a fight that split the Democratic Party and almost ended in defeat several times.

Supporters already worry that the final vote on the Pacific deal could spill into next year's contentious U.S. election season, when populist attacks from the left and the right are likely to make free-trade policy much harder to enact.

Now attention shifts to the TPP itself, a sweeping proposed pact among the U.S., Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Canada and six other Pacific Rim countries.

The pact is aimed at lowering or eliminating a host of tariffs and other barriers on cars, dairy, meat, wheat and thousands of other products.

Perhaps more important are commercial rules-of-the-road on everything from labor and environmental standards to intellectual-property protections for pharmaceuticals and movies.

A handful of sensitive issues remain before U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and other trade ministers can sign the agreement, which could happen as soon as next month.

Still unresolved are the degree to which Japan will open its agricultural markets, the length of protection for pharmaceutical companies' new biologic drugs, and Canada's protections of its dairy and other markets, according to people following the talks. Other countries in the deal are Brunei, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore.

If the TPP is completed in July, it could take six months or more for the agreement to get a final vote in Congress, thanks to delays built into the legislation and necessary legal and bureaucratic steps.

The earliest possible time for a congressional vote will be in the fall.

When the text of the agreement is first published in full after the ministers' signing, it is all but certain to trigger a chorus of specific criticisms from environmental and labor groups, consumer watchdogs and even religious leaders worried about the deal's effect on the affordability of medicine.

"When the inexcusable and anti-democratic veil of secrecy surrounding the TPP is finally lifted and the American people see what is actually in the agreement, they are going to force their representatives in Washington to vote that deal down," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group opposing both fast-track and the Pacific deal.

"There will be another whole battle over TPP," said Susan Schwab, former U.S. trade representative in the George W. Bush administration. "In a complicated trade agreement, [critics] are always going to be able to point to things they say are bad."

While most large U.S. companies back the TPP, some domestically focused American manufacturers are pressing lawmakers to defeat the deal over concerns it would unleash a flood of cheap imports from competitors.

Drug makers are among the top firms lobbying for the TPP, eyeing strong patent protections for drugs and a bigger role in setting government health policy.

Left-leaning groups and some health professionals have criticized such rules on humanitarian grounds, warning of higher medicine prices.

One wild card is the auto industry, which some economists say could be hurt by an relative increase in imports, depending on the size and timing of expected U.S. tariff cuts to cars, trucks and parts imported from Japan.

Some of the pact's most vocal critics are lawmakers from auto states such as Michigan and Ohio. For their part, the big three U.S. auto makers have taken a more nuanced approach, demanding strong rules to prevent Japan and other countries from cheapening their currencies to gain a competitive advantage in the future, as well as policies to help them sell more cars in Japan.

"We would like to be in a position to support the TPP, but in order to do that the TPP has to address currency manipulation and a lot of other non-tariff barriers in a meaningful way," said Matt Blunt, head of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the big Detroit auto makers.

Ford Motor Co. pushed for stronger language committing the Obama administration to include binding rules to punish alleged currency manipulation, something U.S. and foreign officials opposed.

While liberals and many conservatives say corporations are too involved in trade policy, business and farm groups will be a key asset to Mr. Obama and Republicans when they seek to pass the TPP.

Agricultural groups are eager to get better access to Japanese and other markets. Hollywood studios want firm rules to protect copyrights, and technology companies are looking for guarantees of an open Internet and the free flow of data.

"We are on the brink of a cutting-edge Pacific trade agreement that will ensure data flows freely in the cloud, and that governments don't build barriers to the Internet in this century the way they built tariff walls against manufactured goods in the last one," said Chris Padilla, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at International Business Machines Corp.

Write to William Mauldin at william.mauldin@wsj.com

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