Narrow Victory for Fast-Track Provides Bush No Clear Mandate

MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS / Wall Street Journal 29jul02

WASHINGTON -- The House voted to give President Bush a freer hand in negotiating international trade pacts, but his victory's razor-thin margin suggests his hand might not be so free after all.

The House passed the so-called fast-track trade-authority bill 215-212 early Saturday, and the matter now goes to the Senate, which is generally more sympathetic to trade legislation.

The partisanship seen in the House debate, though, is a sure sign that the president and trade negotiator Robert Zoellick could face a fight in Congress if they come seeking approval for international-trade pacts that give too much ground on steel tariffs, farm subsidies, antidumping laws, labor rights or other priority areas for America's trading partners.

"Zoellick knows if he makes too many concessions he won't get the votes back home," said Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a think tank here.

Although Mr. Zoellick and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), who led the president's fight in the House, presented the bill as a bipartisan consensus, the evidence of a near party-line split was hard to miss. Only 25 Democrats voted for the measure, and 27 Republicans voted against it. That could make it difficult for the president to offer the types of concessions U.S. trading partners likely will seek in the Doha, Qatar, global-trade talks; negotiations over the hemispherewide Free Trade Area of the Americas; and bilateral trade talks with such nations as Chile, Singapore and Australia.

Yet House passage of the fast-track bill is a badly needed victory for Mr. Bush, who amid corporate scandals and a deflated stock market has been facing several problems on the economic front lately. The measure would limit Congress to a no-amendments, up-or-down vote on any trade pact the administration negotiates during the next five years. Mr. Bush went to the Capitol on Friday to personally lobby for the bill. The last fast-track law expired in 1994, and two attempts to renew it floundered, signaling an increasingly bitter split in what traditionally had been a largely bipartisan issue.

The vote also marks a triumph for big business and free markets at a time when corporations and deregulation are under heavy attack in Congress. Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., issued a statement saying, "Trade promotion authority provides the United States with the tools necessary to conclude trade agreements that will ensure global growth and security in the 21st century."

The Senate could take up the bill before breaking for vacation this week, although it might face procedural obstacles from senators who oppose it.

The bill, a compromise between House and Senate versions, requires the administration to consult with congressional committees during trade negotiations and to consider as negotiating goals the protection of worker rights, the environment and U.S. laws aimed at countering foreign unfair trade practices. Those goals, however, aren't binding on the administration -- a major reason why so many Democrats voted against it.

Administration officials, however, say the win gives them confidence for the future. "It's always easier to build support for trade when you bring back a concrete agreement and can point to the benefits," Mr. Zoellick said Sunday.

Under intense White House pressure to strike a deal with the Senate, Mr. Thomas sought a balance between Republicans opposed to interjecting labor and environmental concerns into trade legislation and Democrats who worry that U.S. jobs will be lost to nations with lower standards in those areas. Well out of his reach were textile-state Republicans, who oppose the legislation's extension of trade benefits to four Andean nations in exchange for their help in combating illegal drugs and other provisions that allow more apparel from developing nations into the U.S. duty-free.

In the end, Mr. Thomas gave Senate Democrats much of what they wanted by agreeing to about $1.2 billion a year in health-insurance and other benefits for workers left jobless by foreign competition.

Mr. Thomas also ceded ground on whether such benefits should extend to workers whose factories or companies move overseas, a question that almost scuttled House-Senate negotiations. Republicans argued that such moves aren't related to trade, but rather to investment decisions, and shouldn't be eligible. The compromise provides benefits to workers whose plants move to countries covered by preferential trade agreements, such as Jordan, Israel and nations in the Caribbean and Africa. Workers whose companies move elsewhere -- say, China or Indonesia -- are eligible if they prove there has been, or is likely to be, an increase in imports of the product in question.

In addition, Mr. Thomas surrendered on an issue dear to many of his conservative colleagues: how health insurance is provided to laid-off workers. He had wanted the jobless to get a tax credit they could spend to buy individual insurance policies, while Democrats secured language that allows workers access to state-run insurance pools or their former employers' plans.

Democrats did, however, give up a provision that would have allowed the Senate to veto any part of a trade pact that altered U.S. antidumping or countervailing-duty laws, a measure the White House considered unacceptable.

The GOP concessions and the president's personal plea came after his administration had made ill-concealed attempts to win converts in recent months by slapping tariffs on imported steel and softwood and approving massive subsidies for U.S. farmers. But the effort didn't secure Mr. Bush much more support than he got in December, when the original House bill passed 215-214.

--Shailagh Murray contributed to this article.

Bush Seeks to End a Logjam Over 'Fast-Track' Trade Bill

MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS / Wall Street Journal 19jul02

WASHINGTON -- Eager for an economic-policy victory amid corporate-accounting scandals and market turmoil, President Bush is turning up the heat on Congress to pass his top-priority trade bill.

The president summoned key lawmakers from both parties to the White House Thursday evening, hoping to end a House-Senate logjam over a "fast track" bill that would allow him to negotiate trade pacts without congressional tinkering.

"It's a top priority to get it done," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. "What better way is there for the Congress and the administration to give a boost in terms of the economic recovery?"

Democrats had been grousing for weeks that Mr. Bush isn't personally involved in the scrap on the Hill, beyond making general pronouncements about the bill's importance. But Thursday, Mr. Zoellick, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and White House congressional liaison Nicholas E. Calio hit Capitol Hill in the hopes -- however distant -- that Congress will act before breaking for vacation at the end of next week. The lobbying effort was followed by the president's half-hour, Cabinet Room pitch to members of the House-Senate conference negotiating panel trying to work out differences between bills passed by the two chambers. Mr. Bush presented the legislation as critical to American leadership abroad, according to people present.

"If the White House is personally involved in a truly bipartisan way, this will be resolved very quickly," Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee, said afterwards. "The more they turn it over to the Congress and don't get involved, the more likely this could be an extended conference."

Earlier in the week, the conference had been stalled by a spat between Mr. Baucus and House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R., Calif.) over who gets to be chairman of negotiations. Thursday, before the White House meeting, the two men agreed that Mr. Thomas would be chairman of the conference committee on trade, while Mr. Baucus would be chairman of one on Medicare, should it come up.

"We need to get confidence going back in a positive direction," said William Morley, chief trade lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But behind the political maneuvering lie ideological divisions on the Hill over how to handle free trade, which can have broad benefits for the economy as a whole but can exact a high price from certain industries, workers or areas of the country. Fast-track negotiating authority -- under which Congress agrees to consider any new trade agreement on an up-or-down vote with no amendments -- requires faith on the part of lawmakers that the president will protect their interests, and those of their constituents.

"What is surprising is that Big Business and the Bush administration are willing to end-run congressional checks and balances on future trade agreements at a time when the American people's trust in corporations is so low," said John Sweeney, AFL-CIO labor union president.

Mr. Bush, for his part, argues that without fast track, he will be hobbled in his ability to negotiate a hemisphere-wide free-trade area or a new global round of trade liberalization. Yet even though Mr. Bush has made a play for congressional support in recent months by slapping tariffs on imported steel and lumber, many labor-friendly Democrats, and even some Republicans, have been reluctant to give Mr. Bush a free hand.

"We're hopeful that adult intervention can be a positive thing," said one Senate Democratic aide.

-- Greg Hitt contributed to this article.