Years of negotiations on the Pacific Rim trade pact are wrapping up, and the White House faces a sense of urgency due to the growing power that is China acting as the elephant in the room.

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be the biggest trade deal in American history and would involved Japan and 10 other countries comprising of 40 percent of the world’s economy, and it doesn’t include China, which recently overtook the United States as the largest economy in the world, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

The Obama administration is urging Congress to support the TPP, arguing that if the agreement fails, it will be China rather than the United States writing the global trade rules, according to the report.

But China isn’t standing on the sidelines. They are trying to create their own 16-nation trade pact that excludes the United States, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said they need to “make sure we don’t cede ground to China,” the report states.

Obama didn’t launch the TPP talks, but he has made it a key part of his foreign police in East Asia as the United States seeks to counter China’s status as a rising economic and military power that threatens the dominance of the United States.

The administration is trying to hustle on trade-promotion legislation with just two years left in Obama’s term. If the White House were to get authority to act, it would be able to get an agreement with relevant nations and be assured that Congress wouldn’t be able to modify the deal, and could only pass it or reject it.

The Obama administration is attempting to reframe the debate as a competition between U.S. and China, not an issue of trade flows, according to a consultant who was quoted in the report. The Republican Party is generally more favorable to trade agreements, meaning that their victory in the midterms actually boosts the prospects of Obama getting his way, but he still has to convince opponents within his own party.