Copyright 2000 The National Journal, Inc.
The National Journal
December 23, 2000
SECTION: TRADE; Pg. 3968; Vol. 32, No. 52-53
LENGTH: 686 words
HEADLINE:
China Trade Bill Caps Year of Global Concerns
BYLINE:
Robert O'Neill
BODY:
Votes on international trade are not popular among
lawmakers,
especially in an election year. But the second session
of the 106th Congress
defied expectations, as members trudged to
the floors to pass several
significant pieces of trade
legislation.
The
most impressive achievement of 2000 was approval of
permanent normal trade
relations for China, a move that cleared
the way for that country's entry
into the World Trade
Organization. In recent years, an annual fight over
renewing
China's trade authorization had become a Washington ritual-with
labor, environmental, and human rights activists opposing the
extension;
and business interests and the White House urging the
use of trade as a way
to press for improvements in China. The
debate over making China's trade
status permanent turned into a
bitter showdown between these two camps.
At the helm for the Clinton Administration was then-
Commerce Secretary William Daley, who had been responsible for
shepherding the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement through
Congress. The White House, backed by a fiercely determined
business
lobby, put everything on the line, even though the China
PNTR legislation forced a clash between centrist Democrats
who
support trade and the party's labor base, which fears losing jobs
to
cheap labor overseas.
Armed with the budget of a
small country, corporate
lobbyists put the heat on individual lawmakers,
especially those
in swing districts, to support PNTR.
Lobbying groups used grass-
roots organizations and aggressive television
advertising
campaigns to emphasize the economic importance of trade to local
interests.
Opponents of PNTR
drew upon no less an impressive
alliance of labor unions, environmentalists,
and human rights
activists-an alliance that had given due warning of its
power and
intentions at the protests against the WTO meetings in Seattle in
late 1999. This liberal alliance lined up with some key
conservative
Republicans, anti-abortion advocates, and defense
hawks. The
PNTR opponents also targeted undecided members with TV
ads,
letter-writing campaigns, and rallies.
As the House
braced during the spring for a close vote,
Reps. Douglas K. Bereuter,
R-Neb., and Sander M. Levin, D-Mich.,
crafted a compromise amendment that
gave many lawmakers
sufficient political cover to vote for the overall
PNTR bill. The
amendment allowed for close monitoring of
China's behavior under
the new trade regime. In the end, the House approved
the PNTR
legislation on May 24 by a lopsided vote of
237-197. After
lengthy procedural delays, the Senate-long considered to be a
much easier hurdle to clear-approved the bill on Sept. 19 by a
vote of
83-15.
But that was not the only trade fight of the
year. Only
two weeks before the House's vote on China, Congress approved
another trade bill, this one lowering trade barriers with sub-
Saharan
Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. The practical
effect of the bill
was to lower import barriers to textiles from
those areas. Debate over the
legislation splintered the
Congressional Black Caucus, which was torn
between free-traders
led by Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., and opponents
rallying
around Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.
In the end, with opponents distracted by the intense
fight over the
China bill, the measure won enactment-but not
before a provision was
included, at the behest of Carl Lindner,
chairman of Chiquita Brands, to set
up a rolling system of
sanctions against European countries that refused to
import U.S.
beef and bananas from certain Latin American countries.
That was just one of the growing number of
trans-Atlantic
trade skirmishes. The European Union successfully challenged
a
U.S. tax provision allowing American companies to pay reduced
taxes on
their overseas sales. The tax system, judged by the WTO
to be an improper
trade subsidy, was rewritten in a bill approved
by Congress late in the
session.
LOAD-DATE: January 9, 2001
