House OKs Trade Bill; Veto Possible : Democrats Reject Push to Delete Plant Closing Notice Opposed by President

The House, braving President Reagan’s veto threat, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to approve a sweeping omnibus trade bill. The vote came after Democrats beat back a Republican attempt to strip the bill of a controversial provision requiring most manufacturers to give 60 days’ notice of plant closings and major layoffs.

The bill, which would toughen and streamline U.S. curbs on imports, now goes to the Senate, which plans to begin debate today and vote next week. If the Senate passes the bill, as expected, it will go to Reagan, who said Thursday he would veto it if it still contained the plant-closing provision.

The final vote for the bill was 312 to 107, more than the two-thirds majority that would be necessary to override a veto. The voting fell largely along party lines, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed.

23 Break Ranks

The vote against the Republican attempt to eliminate the plant-closing section was substantially closer--253 to 167--and short of a two-thirds majority, with 23 Democrats breaking ranks.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) said the bill “establishes a policy that will make America a winner in international competitive markets.” Last year the United States imported $173 billion more in merchandise than it exported.

As finally approved by the House after three years of legislative maneuvering, the bill is substantially less protectionist than it had been in some of its earlier versions.

Removed, for example, was the Gephardt Amendment, once passed by the House, which would have mandated retaliation against Japan and other countries with large and persistent trade surpluses with the United States.

In its final form, the bill would tighten existing sanctions against trading partners that “dump” their goods in the United States--sell them here at below cost--and it would streamline procedures for imposing tariffs and quotas to protect American industries from surges in foreign competition.

Federal unemployment benefits and retraining programs would be expanded for workers left jobless by competition from abroad. The Administration would receive the broad authority it had sought to negotiate new international trading rules.

Among the non-trade provisions, in addition to the plant-closing section, are repeal of the windfall-profits tax on oil, and recently watered-down sanctions against Japan’s Toshiba Corp. for selling militarily useful technology to the Soviet Union.

Thursday’s House debate focused on the Republican effort to send the bill back to a House-Senate conference committee with instructions to strip out the plant-closing section, which would require 60 days’ notice from manufacturers with 100 or more employees.

“This is nothing but a back-door way to sidetrack the whole trade bill,” warned Rep. William D. Ford (D-Mich.), a leading supporter of the provision. “The effect is to jeopardize the entire 2,000-page package that has taken us three years.”

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (D-Ill.), the leader of the Republican attack on the plant-closing section, called it “a business-closing provision, not just a plant-closing provision. . . . The fact that the United States has not had such a provision is one reason we have been getting foreign investments and Europe has not.”

Michel produced a letter from Reagan that, though it did not mention the plant-closing provision directly, repeated his veto threat.

Appeals for Help

“I want a trade bill,” the letter said. “But to finish the trade bill process in a way that serves America’s interests--not the special interests-- I need your help. I need your vote against the (bill in its current form) and your support for my forthcoming veto.”

Although 23 Democrats broke ranks to support the effort to remove the plant-closing provision, only two voted against the bill in final form. They were Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the author of the Gephardt Amendment, and Robert J. Mrazek of New York.

Gephardt, who dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination last month, said the bill was not tough enough. “I come to the conclusion that we have an important assignment in trade legislation this bill does not fulfill, and that is how to open markets abroad so that we can better sell our products,” Gephardt said.

Sixty-eight Republicans joined 244 in supporting the bill on final passage. Three California Republicans, Wally Herger of Yuba City, Charles Pashayan Jr. of Fresno and William M. Thomas of Bakersfield, voted yes.

Rostenkowski, who managed the bill on the House floor, warned that failure to enact a trade bill this year would weaken the American competitive position worldwide.

Represents ‘Challenge’

The bill, he said, represented “a challenge to American business. If we succeed in reducing foreign barriers to trade, then you had better be ready with superior products . . . and don’t come back here looking for more. If this (bill) fails, the real winners will be those countries who want the United States to remain a paper tiger on trade issues.”

House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) termed Thursday’s vote “the most important vote we will cast this year.” The bill, he said, “provides the rules and the tools and the schools” needed to make the United States once again competitive with Japan and Western Europe.