The Dollars Have It: U.S. House Votes to Grant China Permanent Trade Rights

Big Business groups reached deep into their political war chest and won their race for profits and cheap labor without regard for human and workers' rights. The $12 million advertising and lobbying blitz by business convinced enough members of the U.S. House of Representatives to give up annual review of China's human and workers' rights record and grant China permanent Normal Trade Relations.

The May 24 vote, in effect, gives China a blank check to continue its systematic and widespread abuse of human and workers' rights. Although disappointed with the permanent NTR vote, the AFL-CIO said the debate has focused heightened world attention on China's behavior, and unions will work even harder to educate and mobilize working families around global fairness—and to hold corporations responsible for their treatment of workers everywhere.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney noted that three-quarters of the House Republicans and one-third of Democrats "bowed to big money" and voted to approve unconditional trade with "a human rights violator of epic proportions."

The 237-197 vote came after a months-long battle that pitted U.S. business groups, corporate lobbyists and their expense accounts against a broad grassroots alliance of working families. Along with the flow of corporate money aimed at influencing the vote, President Clinton dangled economic development plums to wavering lawmakers to win votes.

"It's sad that the president secured his 'legacy' by forging an alliance with the very members of Congress who tried to destroy him and our working families' agenda a year ago," Sweeney said.

The Senate is expected to take up permanent NTR in July and some Republican senators have indicated they may want to make changes in the House-passed bill. If the Senate changes the provisions in the bill, there will be a second vote on the legislation in the House to iron out differences between the two versions. But if the Senate passes the identical bill, it will go straight to Clinton for his signature.

The AFL-CIO pledged to work hard to see that working families' disappointment over the vote does not depress turnout for the November elections, as occurred after the NAFTA vote.

Union leaders cited the danger that working people will doubt whether people and principles can pay off in politics, or whether big money is all-powerful.

Joining together to fight what Steelworkers President George Becker called the "multinationals' headlong pursuit of cheap labor," was a coalition of trade unions, environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, faith groups—including the U.S. Catholic Conference on International Policy and the United Methodist Church's General Board of Church and Society—and family advocates such as the Family Research Council.

In the days before the vote, working families flooded congressional offices with phone calls—many generated by worksite cell-phone actions—and e-mails from their home computers and through their unions' political action websites. They also held rallies and demonstrations to sway undecided representatives.

At a rally on the East steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., the evening before the vote, former Chinese political prisoner Harry Wu, a committed human rights activist, urged congressional members "to vote your conscience, not just for profits."

But the profits from the cheap labor of China's exploited workforce were exactly what motivated Big Business' multimillion-dollar campaign for permanent NTR, opponents said. And a headline in the May 24 edition of USA Today about corporate America's desire for unfettered trade with China succinctly summed up business' attitude: "U.S. businesses salivating."

Beginning May 22, The New York Times reported, business interests launched a three-day, $1 million advertising blitz as part of "corporate America's costliest legislative campaign ever." Some estimates put overall corporate spending at more than $12 million.

Just how much money has Big Business funneled into congressional coffers to buy influence on Capitol Hill? Figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that the average contribution by the Business Roundtable (a coalition of 200 corporations) thus far in the 1999-2000 election cycle to House members who voted for permanent NTR is $44,000.

Some have received more, lots more. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has taken in $245,199 in PAC donations and individual contributions from Business Roundtable members. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay's (R-Texas) political war chest is $152,500 richer thanks to Roundtable donations, while Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.) is the beneficiary of $157,441 in contributions.

While the main focus of the fight against permanent NTR was China's abuse of workers', human and religious rights and its use of forced labor, opponents also stressed the flawed deal's potential impact on U.S. jobs. An Economic Policy Institute study predicted U.S. job losses could near 900,000 under the trade scheme.

Proponents claim permanent NTR will open China's markets for U.S. products. But as Machinists President Tom Buffenbarger pointed out, "This China proposal is about factories, not markets. We cannot survive as a world economic power as long as we continue to export our capital, our technology and our jobs to low-wage countries."

Despite its multimillion-dollar campaign, corporate America's rush to do business with China and turn its eyes away from that nation's notorious record of human rights abuse garnered little support from the public.

Voters overwhelmingly opposed permanent open trade with China without an annual review of that nation's rights record, according to a recent Harris Interactive survey for Business Week and an earlier Peter D. Hart Research Associates survey conducted for the AFL-CIO.

Highlights of working families' battle against the big-money corporate campaign for permanent NTR included an April 12 rally in Washington, D.C., that drew more than 15,000 union members to Capitol Hill; dozens of congressional spring recess actions; and an April 16 Mobilization for Global Justice that brought 30,000 activists to the nation's capital.

The fight against permanent NTR for China was part of the AFL-CIO's overall campaign to "Make the Global Economy Work for Working Families" by joining together with trade unions, human rights groups and other allies around the world to end child labor and sweatshops, protect and expand the rights of workers and provide a counterbalance to powerful and rich multinational corporations.