Republican House Leaders Offer Trade Bill

House Republican leaders, conceding that the White House has not muted an “ever-increasing crescendo” of voter complaints about trade, introduced legislation Tuesday to strengthen Congress’ hand against what it calls unfair trading practices and to boost incentives for American exports.

The bill, the first Republican trade initiative of the fall, “puts our trading partners on notice that we will not tolerate foreign trade practices which bar U.S. goods from foreign markets,” House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said at a news conference.

It also would dilute President Reagan’s ability to resist protectionist actions against foreign competitors--long a Reagan policy--by weakening his authority to decide whether quotas and tariffs should be imposed on imported goods.

The President angered some legislators last month when he refused to order barriers against cheap footwear imports that have depressed the U.S. shoe industry.

Clayton Yeutter, Reagan’s special trade representative, criticized that portion of the bill Tuesday but otherwise called the GOP proposal a “very encouraging” alternative to more drastic protectionist legislation now in both chambers of Congress.

The Republican measure, mixing ideas from both protectionist and free-trade legislators, proposes actions ranging from legalizing the sale of Alaskan petroleum to Japan to calling international summits on trade issues and monetary policy.

But its most important provision would order the International Trade Commission, which judges complaints by U.S. industries of unfair competition, to recommend penalties for unfair trade, such as tariffs, to the special trade representative instead of to the President, who has generally opposed penalties.

Under the bill, the trade representative also would be allowed to impose retaliatory tariffs and quotas against the largest industries of other nations to force the lowering of trade barriers abroad. The President could override any actions to protect U.S. firms or punish foreigners, but Congress also would have the right to overrule the President’s decisions.

The GOP measure was filed as the House and Senate neared votes on a key test of protectionist sentiment--legislation to limit foreign competition against the sagging American textile and apparel industries. Despite a veto threat by Reagan, the curb on textile imports should pass the House and could fare well in the Senate, Michel said Tuesday.

In response to powerful support for the textile bill, the GOP measure calls for regular adjustments in textile import quotas.

The bill gives Republican legislators facing reelection a political counterweight to a stricter Democratic measure, now before a House Ways and Means subcommittee, that would impose a 25% tariff on four nations that have large trade surpluses with the United States--Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil--unless they lower trade barriers.

Industrial-state Republicans, under pressure from jobless constituents to support barriers to foreign competition, have been increasingly open in their criticism of the Reagan’s free-trade policies.

Although he did not say that White House inaction forced the drafting of the bill introduced Tuesday, Michel told reporters that it is “no secret” that some Republicans have been displeased with Administration trade policies.

“When members came back from their August recess . . . one of the things that was cropping up in an ever-increasing crescendo was this matter of our trade imbalance and what it was doing by loss of jobs,” he said. “All those forces combined have brought the issue right up on the front burner.”