Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
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May 21, 2000, Sunday 2 STAR EDITION
SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 635 words
HEADLINE:
CHINA TRADE;
Many reasons to do a fair deal with Asian giant
SOURCE: Staff
BODY:
The
unlikely alliance of President Clinton and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land,
has been working to pass it. A wide array of business and agricultural interests
which stand to benefit has been supporting it. The trade-friendly House Ways and
Means Committee, under the chairmanship of Houston's Rep. Bill Archer, has
approved it by a 34-4 vote. The Senate Finance Committee voted in favor 18-1.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says it will be a boon to our economy.
And even Taiwan supports it.
But legislation granting permanent normal
trade relations (known as PNTR) to China, which is due up this
week for a vote on the House floor, is far from a done deal.
Many in the
House on both sides of the aisle, suspicious of Beijing or joining organized
labor's opposition, are hostile to this important piece of legislation.
That's unfortunate. The legislation should be passed and signed into
law.
There are many reasons to do so.
Start with Taiwan, an ally
which is making many inroads into the mainland's economy, with something like $
40 billion in investments in place or in the pipeline on behalf of some 40,000
Taiwanese companies. Newly elected President Chen Shui-bian has expressed strong
support for lifting bans on direct trade and for China's entry into the World
Trade Organization, which will come if PNTR is approved in the
U.S. Congress.
Taiwanese see the move as a way to ease tensions across
the Taiwan Strait, help lift Taiwan's economy and a constructive way to further
engage the mainland Chinese.
It is, thus, a way to help assure U.S.
security and strategic interests in the region and a way to increase the
exposure of the repressive mainland regime to moderating outside influences.
For the United States, PNTR means fuller and fairer
access to the huge and growing China market. For states like Texas, where
sectors like trade, agriculture and techno-logy play such big roles, there will
be many direct benefits.
Critics fear job losses, but in the last five
years, while our trade deficit with China has more than doubled, our
unemployment rate has fallen to a three-decade low, real wages and compensation
are rising across all income groups and manufacturing output continues
vigorously. The wider market that China represents will add to that dynamic.
And it's not just big business. A new report by the General Accounting
Office demonstrates how increased trade will greatly benefit small- and
medium-sized businesses. Increased trade has already nearly doubled the number
of such businesses engaged in exporting since 1992. Ninety-seven percent of U.S.
exporters in 1997 were firms of fewer than 500 employees, the report shows.
Furthermore, the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policies Studies
refuted alarmist projections about the number of American jobs that would be
lost to PNTR.
The figures show, says the study, that
not more or fewer jobs, but better jobs will be created. Among the ways this
will happen are by allowing Americans to export what we are best at producing
and by facilitating exports to China from U.S. plants rather than being forced
to build plants in China.
In essence, the opening of China's market that
would come as a reciprocal of granting PNTR would allow the
strongest sectors of our economy to compete there.
There are also
provisions in the bill to set up closer monitoring of China's human rights
record, which remains abysmal. What few improvements have come in the human
rights arena have come as a result of engagement and not as a result of the
annual debate that we have had in this country over whether to re-grant trade
rights. Such a yearly debate is productive mostly as a forum for pandering and
posturing by U.S. politicians.
There are many reasons to grant
PNTR. These are just some of them.
TYPE: Editorial Opinion
LOAD-DATE: May 22, 2000 
