11th-Hour Brokering Paved Way for Bush’s Trade Pact Triumph

Rep. Robert B. Aderholt’s cellphone rang Wednesday as the Alabama Republican was standing in the House gallery with some constituents.

The caller was President Bush.

Bush told Aderholt that he hoped the lawmaker would support the Central American Free Trade Agreement when it came up for a vote later in the day, emphasizing its importance to national security. Aderholt laid out some concerns about the accord. What followed was the kind of last-minute negotiating that helped Bush push his controversial trade pact through the House with a margin of two votes.

The call presented Aderholt with an opportunity that he was quick to seize. “I have some real concerns about the way CAFTA would treat my district, and I have some things that really need to be worked out before I can vote for it,” Aderholt said he told the president. “He said, ‘OK, we’ll continue to call you on this.’ ”

By the end of the day, Aderholt had in hand a letter signed by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, promising a series of steps to protect sock manufacturers and poultry producers in Aderholt’s northern Alabama district.

The late bargaining for votes in support of CAFTA angered critics, who said Thursday that they considered the deal-making unseemly.

“Right there in front of us, for the world to see, they were twisting arms, making deals, changing votes,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). “This let’s-make-a-deal mentality ... has got to stop.”

As lawmakers returned to work Thursday after a lengthy CAFTA debate and roll call that went past midnight, there were hints of recriminations and retribution.

The vote was the culmination of months of intense lobbying by the Bush administration and its allies on a trade pact whose economic significance paled in comparison with its symbolic importance.

CAFTA, which was approved by the Senate in June and now awaits Bush’s signature, will remove most trade barriers between the United States and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

The agreement became a lightning rod for discontent about globalization, China’s trade and currency policies, and U.S. job losses.

Heading into Wednesday’s House showdown, it appeared Bush might become the first president in more than 40 years to suffer the loss of a major trade agreement in Congress.

For more than an hour, lawmakers milled about the House floor and gazed at the electronic scoreboard displaying the vote tally, which showed CAFTA several votes short of the mark. Finally, when the count reached 217 to 215, the vote was gaveled to a close.

As expected, the House had divided largely along partisan lines. But 27 Republicans bucked their party and president by casting “no” votes, and 15 Democrats defected from their leadership and supported the pact. Some members surprised colleagues and angered interest groups by abandoning previous pledges or deviating from expectations with their votes.

Some said the defections should not go unpunished.

The Republican Main Street Partnership -- which represents centrist GOP lawmakers -- said it was distressed by votes against CAFTA by some lawmakers who also were members of the Club for Growth, a conservative fundraising organization that had threatened to run primary candidates against moderate Republican incumbents. The Main Street group asked whether the Club for Growth would “hold these members [who voted against CAFTA] accountable” by running primary candidates against them.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he had no plans to punish two GOP committee chairmen who voted against CAFTA -- Reps. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon and Bob Ney of Ohio -- or other party members who had cast “no” votes.

On the other side of the political divide, some activists urged labor unions to withhold contributions to the 15 Democrats who voted for CAFTA. Pelosi said she was convening a closed meeting Thursday evening to try to determine why Democrats had rejected calls for party unity.

“We’ll have some conversations in our caucus,” Pelosi said. “They’re 15 different people, 15 different constituencies, and I think the judgments will be different for different people.”

Aderholt, a fifth-term Republican whose district includes Fort Payne, Ala., the self-styled “sock capital of the world,” had been trying for weeks to get administration officials to protect hosiery makers from a potential surge of low-cost imports under CAFTA.

Even before the president called him Wednesday, Aderholt had been meeting with Portman to try to work something out.

The final letter of agreement, delivered to him shortly before the CAFTA vote began, contained a number of substantive concessions. Among them: Instead of being phased out immediately, tariffs on sock imports from the six CAFTA countries would remain in place for five years, then be phased out gradually over another five years. Aderholt said the provisions would save as many as 5,000 jobs in his district.

Aderholt, who had been signaling he would probably vote against CAFTA, startled some of his colleagues with his “yes” vote. But it didn’t trouble him.

“What I’m concerned about is the bottom line for the district I represent,” he said. “I was pleased.”

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this report.