The decision is, of course, whether to accord to the People's Republic of China Full WTO Member Treatment, in the form of PNTR--permanent Normal Trade Relations treatment for imports from China.

The US-China WTO agreement of November 15, 1999

The US-China agreement on the terms of China's WTO accession reached in November 1999 is the single most significant example of positive US influence on China's behavior since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. It demonstrates the power of effective negotiation, and the value of real, hard-nosed, and professional engagement with China on issues of substance and detail. "Sending messages to China" has never brought about the level of commitment to internal change that this carefully wrought and wide-ranging agreement has accomplished.

With the remarkable US-China bilateral agreement in hand, China's full-fledged participation in the global rules-based trading system is a very big step closer. The United States will now support China's WTO entry when the WTO makes its final decision, since Uncle Sam secured from China the concessions and commitments necessary to defend and advance the interests of US producers, farmers, exporters, service providers, investors, and consumers.

The market-opening commitments secured by American negotiators in November will be included in the final documents defining China's WTO accession, and cannot be weakened.

With China's accession to the WTO now in view, the rest of the WTO's 135 members are ready to enjoy the broad array of opportunities opening to them. From Day One of China's WTO membership, they will automatically provide to China and receive from China Full WTO Member Treatment in all areas defined by the WTO's own codes and by China's specific commitments.

Will the United States now grasp the opportunities our own negotiators have wrought, or will the United States choose to turn away from key elements of that package of opportunities, even as our competitors enjoy them?--That is the question before Congress.

The WTO: the rule of law in international trade

The WTO, like its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), is the world's common defense against international trade anarchy and economic chaos, which helped drive the world to totalitarianism and war in the 1930s. WTO rules and commitments liberate market forces and open markets, while providing safeguards against predatory trade practices that violate agreed-upon norms of openness and reciprocity.

At the core of the WTO compact are the common extension of WTO rights to, and the common acceptance of WTO obligations by, all members.

This is PNTR--Permanent Normal Trade Relations, as we call it in the United States. The first lines of the first provision of WTO rules require each WTO member to extend to all other WTO members the best trade treatment it offers to any of them--in other words, Permanent NTR. Giving and receiving PNTR is the cornerstone of the WTO relationship among members, a relationship that in its turn extends far, far beyond tariffs.

To fail to extend PNTR to another WTO member is to refuse to extend Full WTO Member Treatment--and to forfeit, in turn, the member-to-member WTO relationship.

For other countries, this is a non-problem; Full WTO Member Treatment is automatic for any new WTO member.

For the United States, it's different. In 1974, seeking to compel the now-defunct Soviet Union to permit the emigration of certain Soviet citizens, the United States enacted into law the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to that year's Trade Act. Jackson-Vanik mandates one-year-at-a-time extension by the White House of plain-vanilla NTR tariffs on goods from non-market economies, with the presidential extension vulnerable in any year to congressional overturn on any grounds.

After the United States and China opened diplomatic relations and signed a bilateral trade agreement in 1979, US-China relations developed in a Cold War environment of common concern over Soviet intentions. Jackson-Vanik's provisions for possible cancellation of standard American tariffs lay dormant for ten years.

Since 1990, following the televised tragedy of Tiananmen, the nation has witnessed a decade of annual summer fireworks over an inevitable legislative proposal to kill NTR, close American markets to Chinese imports, and push US-China relations onto the rocks.

Each year, however, those who have led the fight to kill US-China trade have failed. In recent years the strong margin of victory in the United States for advocates of continued non-preferential trade relations with China has reflected the broad bipartisan consensus that stable economic engagement with China offered a more promising avenue for the pursuit of American material and ethical interests with the PRC than did a unilateral declaration of economic war.

A critical choice

With the US and Chinese governments now agreed in writing on China's remarkable commitments to market-opening and internal economic reform as conditions of WTO accession, however, Congress faces new issues.

Now, Congress must decide not whether to destroy existing economic relations with China, but whether to sustain Normal Trade Relations over the long term, and whether to support the building of a more secure and durable US economic relationship with a China now bound by its obligations to WTO rules and standards.

As China approaches WTO accession, heavily on American terms, the US Congress has the choice:

Do we bring home to American exporters, farmers, workers, and consumers the benefits of China's massive commitments to open its markets, permit foreign participation in formerly closed economic sectors, reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, reform its standards of economic conduct, and submit to the binding obligations of WTO rules and regulations that the United States has done so much to design?

Or do we say to China, "Thanks for the concessions; we don't want them after all.

"Thanks for the detailed commitments rapidly to open your markets and dismantle the apparatus of discrimination against us, rooted in ancient history and Leninist secrecy and Maoist dreams of self-sufficiency. We don't want those commitments, either.

"Thanks for the historic decisions you have made--at our insistence--to drive the Chinese economy rapidly away from Stalin-Mao economics and toward market economics, whose principles lie at the core of Americans' conceptions of social and economic justice. Those decisions, on second thought, don't merit our endorsement.

"And, by the way, about all those iniquities we've objected to for so long: the partiality of your legal and judicial system, the intolerable bureaucratic obstacles to economic cooperation, the opacity of your decisionmaking processes--we prefer to live with them after all. We know you're going to improve your behavior toward the rest of the WTO's members, including our toughest competitors. But don't worry about us: we'll stick to the old system, arm wrestling alone with you to the brink of trade war instead of turning to the world's dispute-resolution mechanisms when we've got a gripe."

That is America's choice as we approach the PNTR decision.

The choice is about delivering to Americans the fruits of what we have ourselves achieved at the negotiating table.

It is about realizing American opportunities in the global economy, instead of "sending messages" abroad while handing hard-won, real opportunities to our competitors.

It is about encouraging the evolutionary changes within China that American critics of the PRC have long demanded, instead of providing aid and comfort to the defenders of an unraveling status quo inside China that congressional critics have denounced unremittingly for more than a decade.

It is time to approve PNTR, end the numbing annual NTR exercise, and bring home to American producers, farmers, exporters, investors, and consumers the benefits our negotiators have finally won--IN FULL AND ON TIME.