Deadline Looms for 17 Subcommittees : Panels Struggling to Find Trade Compromises

Only one day from a self-imposed deadline for action, Senate and House panels struggled Wednesday over the most contentious issues in a massive package of trade legislation but moved only slightly closer to compromises that could head off a threatened veto by President Reagan.

Seventeen separate subcommittees of the joint conference committee worked to reconcile their competing trade proposals and to dilute measures that Reagan has criticized as too protectionist and likely to invite retaliation by U.S. trading partners.

No firm agreements were struck, leaving a substantial challenge for the lawmakers today as they try to finish the package before next week’s Easter recess.

One subcommittee moved a few steps toward defusing an issue Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III had warned would invite a certain veto. The panel watered down a House proposal requiring the Administration to take steps toward establishing a new international bureaucracy to handle Third World debt problems.

Vows to Finish

Some have insisted that some initiative to relieve the massive Latin American debt was necessary, but the Administration has warned against measures that it says would encourage loan defaults or lead to unwarranted bail-outs.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), who heads the most important of the conference subcommittees, deferred action on Senate proposals on several controversial issues, including mandatory retaliation against U.S. trading partners with large trade surpluses.

Asked if the day’s slow progress meant that resolution is unlikely today, Rostenkowski said: “I’m not going to kill myself to have that guy downtown say he’s going to veto everything.” But he added: “We’re going to finish tomorrow.”

Included in the package of measures on which action is expected today is the so-called Gephardt Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), which would impose trade sanctions against any nation that allegedly employs unfair trade practices and sells much more to the United States than it buys.

Other measures under consideration would undercut the executive branch’s authority to waive sanctions in trade dispute cases and would create a new job-training agency to help U.S. workers who have lost their jobs because of competition from foreign imports.

‘Good Momentum’

The agency would be financed by a new trade tariff that would have to be negotiated with other countries.

U.S. Trade Representative Clayton K. Yeutter said he now thinks that the committees’ chances of meeting their deadline are “about 50-50.” With the dilution of some proposals opposed by the Administration, he said, “we have good momentum now.” But he added: “we may lose it after the (Easter) recess.”