WASHINGTON - Senator Jim Webb views with "skepticism" the free-trade agreement
(FTA) worked out by United States and South Korean negotiators in talks that
dragged on for nearly a year and a half. He doubts, however, if he'll have to
decide whether or not to vote on it.
"Will it ever come up for a vote?" the Virginia Democrat, a much-decorated
Vietnam War veteran and author of several novels, shot back rhetorically when
asked if he'd vote for or against the free-trade agreement's ratification by
the US Congress.
Webb's response, as he signed copies of his latest book, A Time to Fight:
Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, at the National
Press Club, pointed to the increasingly dim prospects for a deal touted by
South Korean and American leaders as sure to result in a vast increase in
two-way trade.
Opposition to the agreement has been coalescing in the US Congress while
protests in South Korea against the import of US beef make the agreement's
chances all the less likely to win approval in South Korea's fractious National
Assembly. South Korea has banned US beef ever since the discovery of mad cow
disease in one American animal in 2003.
The protests in South Korea have forced the government of the conservative Lee
Myung-bak, inaugurated as president 100 days ago, first to postpone the import
of US beef and then to agree not to import beef from cows more than 30 months
old. Lee's critics charge that he agreed with unseemly haste to bow to US
demands for opening up to US beef after repeated reminders from American
diplomats that the FTA had no chance of ratification by Congress if US beef
were still excluded.
The crisis confronting the Lee government over US beef collides with the
assumption by the US administration that somehow South Korea would live up to
the beef agreement hammered out in April and the protests would die down. Even
if that assumption eventually proves correct, adherence by South Korea to the
beef deal is no guarantee of ratification of the FTA by the US Congress.
The anti-beef, anti-FTA protest, rising in intensity over the past month, comes
as a shock to South Korean and American officials, caught by surprise just as
they believed US-Korean relations were improving after strains under the two
presidents who ruled for a decade before Lee's landslide election victory in
December.
When Lee flew to the US to meet President George W Bush at Camp David hours
after negotiators had come to terms on beef, he did so with a sense of relief.
That critical issue appeared to have been resolved so the two leaders could go
on to talk about strengthening the US-South Korean alliance and coordinating
efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear program.
It's possible that North Korea will present a compromise declaration that
avoids direct acknowledgement of its enriched uranium program while the US
takes steps to lift economic sanctions and remove North Korea from the list of
state sponsors of terrorism. US beef and the FTA, however, are far more
emotional issues on the streets of Seoul, just as loss of jobs, for whatever
reason, is an emotional issue in the US.
Indeed, the sense in Washington is that the Congress will either vote against
ratifying the agreement or will simply not vote on it at all. Bush has yet to
send it to Congress for ratification, and he's getting advice on all sides to
drop it, to let it slide into the next administration.
The prospects for the FTA suffered a severe blow last month when Barack Obama,
the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote to Bush
saying the FTA is "badly flawed" and advising him not to ask Congress to vote
on it. Obama, reflecting complaints from the US motor vehicle industry, said
the deal "would give Korean exports essentially unfettered access to the US
market and would eliminate our best opportunity for obtaining genuinely
reciprocal market access in one of the world's largest economies".
Larry Niksch, Asia specialist at the Congressional Research Service, believes
Obama's position means the free-trade agreement has "no chance" in the US
Congress while Bush is in office. Senator Hillary Clinton, Obama's opponent for
the Democratic nomination, has already voiced her strenuous opposition.
For Obama as well as Clinton, opposition to the FTA fits in with their populist
strategy for winning votes among workers fearful of losing still more jobs
while the economy sinks into a recession characterized by rising prices,
mounting bankruptcies and the loss of homes in a mortgage crisis.
Niksch noted, however, that Obama "keeps the door open to do something about
the agreement but probably in a modified way" if he is elected president.
Obama, said Niksch, may want to include rice in a revised FTA, even though rice
is such an emotional issue in South Korea that it's not covered at all in the
current FTA. Obama may have had rice in mind when he said in his letter to Bush
that the FTA as it now stands "would reinforce the sense that our trade policy
does not adequately reflect manufacturing and agricultural exports".
In other words, like it or not, US and South Korean negotiators may be in for
another year of hard wheeling and dealing when the next US administration takes
office. John McCain, certain to win the Republican nomination, has endorsed the
FTA in its present form, but will have to deal with a Democrat-controlled
Congress that is going to demand substantial revisions.
Victor Cha, who served for nearly three years as director for Asian affairs at
the National Security Council, believes the only way for the FTA to make it
through Congress is for Bush to go "on the offensive" when and if the FTA is
approved by South Korea's National Assembly.
Bush, said Cha, now director of Asian studies at Georgetown University, needs
to get across to recalcitrant members of Congress that "this is not just about
a trade relationship". Congress has to understand, "If we don't do this, China
and the European Union will begin to make FTAs that exclude us." If the FTA
"becomes a high-profile issue, then it will work", said Cha. "Everyone agrees
this is a shining example of an FTA that benefits both sides."
That argument, however, leads advocates of the FTA to believe that the
agreement is too important to jeopardize by a premature congressional debate
that might kill it off. Thus Donald Gross, adjunct fellow of the Pacific Forum
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes "the best
course would be if the current US administration were to hold off" on pressing
for passage of the deal.
Gross believes that the FTA's "flaming defeat" in Congress would be "very
painful for the whole relationship" between the US and South Korea. "My
personal hope," he said, "is for it not to be submitted to the US Congress."
The fact is, to Americans, the anti-beef protests are a secondary irritant,
background noise that hardly makes it into the media. In any case, said Niksch
at the Congressional Research Service, it may be too late now for Congress to
have time to debate and vote on the FTA.
"If Bush doesn't send it to Congress in the next few days, Congress won't have
enough time to give it full consideration," he said. "It's important the
Koreans understand the situation and not be too optimistic."
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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