November 20, 1999	atimes.com

China Foes of China's WTO deal gather for counterattack By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - Foes of the US-China accord on the terms for Beijing joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) are marshalling forces to defeat a key element of the agreement in Congress next year. It will not be an easy task. Major US multinational corporations, backed by the administration of President Bill Clinton, most of the Republican Congressional leadership, and the leading presidential candidates in both parties are already mobilizing a multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign. ''If this gets to Congress next year, it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out battle,'' says Lori Wallach, head of Global Trade Watch of Public Citizen, an anti-globalization lobby at the center of a coalition of right-wing political groups, textile interests, labor unions, church groups, plus Tibetan and environmental activists. This unlikely coalition, nevertheless, has clout. The groups - found mostly on the right wing of the Republican Party and the left wing of the Democratic Party - have successfully frustrated Clinton's efforts over the past four years to get Congress to give him ''fast-track'' authority to negotiate new trade accords. As in the past, they will argue that the China accord subordinates human rights and the welfare of US workers to the interests of the corporate elite. The accord, the first of a series China must reach with other major WTO members in the coming months in order to gain membership in the body, will slash Chinese tariffs on imports of goods ranging from agricultural products to automobiles. It also will permit US and other foreign businesses unprecedented freedom in distributing their goods and services and investing in Chinese enterprises. The looming battle in Congress will not be over the specific contents of the deal struck between US and Chinese trade negotiators in Beijing earlier this week. Congress has no say on the specific provisions. But it must approve one item which US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky described as Beijing's ''sine qua non'' for the deal: that China be granted ''normal trade relations'' (NTR) - formerly known as ''most-favored-nation'' status - on a permanent basis. China currently enjoys NTR, which accords it the same trade preferences as most other US trading partners. As a communist state, however, NTR must be approved one year at a time. Since Beijing's 1989 crackdown against the pro-democracy movement in China, renewing NTR status has been a perennial source of often-fiery debate - and some close votes - in the House. In order to provide Beijing with permanent NTR, both houses of the US Congress must vote to amend the relevant law. While that should be relatively easy in the Senate, where free-trade forces are stronger, it could face tough resistance in the House of Representatives. If permanent NTR is granted, lawmakers will lose what has become the one regular opportunity to debate and influence US policy toward China. ''They won't want to give up the leverage that implies,'' says one congressional aide, whose boss is an influential Democrat. Beijing and big US companies with substantial interests in China have long favored both WTO membership and permanent NTR because they would remove the possibility that Washington could suddenly slap far-reaching economic sanctions against Beijing that could jeopardize their investments and development plans. US multinationals, which have invested tens of billions of dollars in China during the 1990s, are gearing up for a major fight. The Business Roundtable, made up of the top executives of the 200 largest US companies, has committed $10 million to a lobbying campaign. Other business associations, like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, are also preparing to mobilize their constituencies at the grassroots. ''We were asked by the administration if we could deliver the votes,'' L Craig Johnstone, a top Chamber of Commerce official told the New York Times this week. ''We said we could and we will.'' But opponents, many of whom also oppose the WTO, are also fired up. Organized labor, which is most concerned about the export of US jobs and technology to China, is expected to lead the fight. In an unexpectedly harsh statement, John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO, the main US trade union federation, denounced the accord as a ''grave mistake''. ''By continuing to persecute dissenters, to imprison labor leaders and worker activists and to export goods produced by slave labor, China shows it has no interest in playing by even the most basic rules of the world community,'' he said. That theme is only one of many that will be used against both China's WTO membership and NTR status. Pointing to the soaring US trade deficit - much of it with China - the head of the US steelworkers, George Becker, warned that the accord will ''accelerate that deficit further, shutting down even more plants and robbing more industrial workers of their livelihood''. He labeled Clinton's agreement as ''one of the worst betrayals of workers in my lifetime''. On the other side of the political spectrum, right-wing groups also are mobilizing. At a conference uniting various representatives of the anti-NTR coalition on Thursday, Darren Logan of the Family Research Council, a key Religious Right group, denounced the accord as evidence of Washington's moral waywardness. ''We must not allow commercial interests to set US foreign policy.'' He was joined by Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, and other senior officials of environmental groups. Admitting China to the WTO, he said, would doom efforts to make the WTO more responsive to environmental, as well as workers' concerns. It ''shows that the administration's real trade priority is boosting corporate profits - not promoting democracy, environmental protection and human rights''. ''Now is not the time to extend membership in the WTO,'' noted Reverend Thom White Wolf Fassett, general secretary of the United Methodist Church. ''We support continued trade with China, but believe it is best regulated by annual reviews of China's progress toward better human rights, labor rights, religious freedom, and environmental protection.'' (Inter Press Service)

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