Reagan Defends His Promise to Veto Trade Bill

President Reagan, vigorously defending his promise to veto a trade bill against election-year attacks from Democrats, said Monday that plant-closing “restrictions” in the measure are “like playing Russian roulette with a machine gun--a sure loser.”

He also termed the plant-closing provisions, which would require companies to give workers 60 days’ notice before any sizable layoffs, a “shackle” on small firms and a “ticking bomb” for larger businesses.

The notification requirements, Reagan concluded, would discourage some companies from growing and would put others at a competitive disadvantage, leading to increased unemployment.

The President’s harsh criticism was applauded loudly at a meeting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which joined the Reagan Administration in making the plant-closing provisions the primary target of opposition to the trade bill passed last week by Congress.

Dukakis Scores President

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who apparently is headed for the Democratic presidential nomination, continued Monday on the primary campaign trial in Ohio to denounce Reagan’s plans to veto the legislation. He said last week that he intended to make plant closings a major part of his campaign against George Bush, the certain Republican nominee.

Dukakis, arguing that a 60-day warning on layoffs is only fair, has touted his state’s plant-closing law, which includes voluntary advance notification, and rewards companies that provide it with readjustment assistance for their workers.

Bush, while saying that such notice would be “compassionate,” contended that it would not be “competitive.”

Democratic candidates for the House and Senate are also planning to hammer their Republican opponents over the plant-closing issue. And Democratic strategists hope the issue will help bring back droves of blue-collar voters--particularly in the “rust belt” of the Northeast and Midwest--who flocked to Reagan in 1980 and 1984.

Bill’s Requirements

The trade bill would require companies with at least 100 workers to give 60 days’ notice of a plant’s closing that would affect 50 or more workers. Layoffs affecting one-third of the work force for at least six months would also require 60-days’ notice.

Reagan said the requirement would be “a shackle on smaller companies that want to take the leap and become large. . . . If they cross the threshold and fall under the regulation, (they would have) an important reason to say, ‘Let’s all hold off growing that big for a while.’ ”

Moreover, he argued, the requirement is “a ticking bomb in the back seat of any medium-sized or larger company that is stripping down or overhauling so it can keep on the track with foreign racers.”

The bill’s complex exemptions, he said, would “detonate lawsuits, sending managers to the courtroom just when they’re most needed in the factory pulling their weight.”

‘Europe’s Poor Performance’

Reagan dismissed claims that the requirement would be harmless because many European countries have similar restrictions themselves.

“Yup--and that’s among the reasons for Europe’s poor job performance over the last six years,” he said. “If we had done as poorly, our unemployment rate would be up like theirs--not down from 10.8% to 5.5%.”

With Senate leaders conceding that a veto could not be overridden, Reagan reiterated that he would still like to sign a stripped-down trade measure this year.