Reagan Urges Prompt Action on ‘a Second Trade Bill’

President Reagan, facing an election year confrontation with the Democratic-run 100th Congress, said again Saturday that he intends to veto the trade bill, primarily because its plant-closing provision “threatens to destroy jobs and would begin to reverse the policies of the last seven years.”

The bill roared through the House on a 312-107 roll call but passed the Senate 63 to 36, three votes short of the two-thirds required to override a veto. In his weekly radio talk Saturday, Reagan urged Congress to “schedule prompt action on a second trade bill immediately after it sustains my veto on this one.”

Wright Opposes Veto

However, the plans of the majority leadership went undisclosed when House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) delivered a Democratic response, which opposed the promised veto but was actually taped before Reagan delivered his broadcast from Camp David, Md.

“America needs this bill. And so we plead with President Reagan: Please sign the trade bill,” Wright said. He called Reagan’s objections “not sufficient cause . . . to abandon the work of three years and scrap this vitally needed legislation.”

Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo), a Reagan ally, predicted as he left a meeting of the Business Council at Hot Springs, Va., that the Senate would indeed sustain Reagan’s veto. Then, he said, Congress will go on to pass a second trade bill tailored to Reagan’s objections because “there are a lot of engines behind” the drive for legislation to improve the U.S. competitive position in the world economy.

The President conceded in his broadcast that “there are many positive aspects” to the legislation, which reached the White House on Friday, two weeks after the Senate completed congressional action on the measure. At the same time, he said, some of its provisions “would move us a step further toward protectionism,” while others “would create new bureaucracies.”

As he has done previously, Reagan zeroed in on a provision requiring businesses to give at least 60 days’ notice of intent to impose mass layoffs or complete shutdowns on plants employing 100 or more workers.

While it is “the humane thing” for employers to give “as much warning as they can,” Reagan said, it is better to work out shutdown procedures in collective bargaining negotiations than to have them imposed by “big government.”

Exemption ‘Too Vague’

There are circumstances, Reagan said, under which the plant-closing provisions of the trade bill “would actually force a business to shut down.” If a “struggling business” should announce that a cutback or shutdown is coming, he said, “then creditors, suppliers and customers would disappear, eliminating any chance of survival.” He called a “struggling company exemption” in the bill “too vague and unclear to be workable.”

On the plus side, Reagan commended provisions of the bill that would strengthen the authority of negotiators seeking to open U.S. overseas markets and would provide education, retraining and job placement services for displaced workers.

Tailoring his rhetoric to this campaign year, Reagan said his Administration “has limited government, cutting taxes and regulations alike.” The result, he said, is “the longest peacetime expansion in American history,” with unemployment at a 13-year low and 16 million new jobs added to the national payroll.