Clinton May Oppose Bush on Trade Pact

As negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement accelerate toward conclusion, Bill Clinton appears to be heading toward qualified opposition to the proposed pact--and a sharp conflict with President Bush.

Though aides to the Democratic presidential nominee insist he has not reached a decision, Clinton’s recent remarks--as well as conversations with key policy advisers--suggest that absent an unexpected turn in the talks, he is likely to conclude the proposed treaty falls short on several key counts, including protecting the environment and workers’ rights.

“From everything we read, the treaty has a whole lot of things in it for people who want to invest money and nothing for labor practices (nor) for the environment,” Clinton told a labor audience in San Francisco this week. “It looks like they’re going to take a dive and just go for the money and it’s wrong.”

Though relatively few voters nationwide may even be aware of the proposed treaty, both sides believe it could raise larger and more volatile issues in the presidential campaign. If Clinton sharply criticizes the proposed agreement--after portraying himself as a free-trader through the primaries--Bush aides are poised to accuse him of reversing his position to secure support from union leaders who are fearful that lowered trade barriers will lead to an exodus of high-paying jobs to Mexico.

“I just don’t think you can argue you’re for free trade but against an historic agreement of this nature,” said one senior aide in the Bush reelection effort. “What he will have done will be obvious to all--that he’s sold out on the issue to get the AFL-CIO endorsement.”

Clinton aides say he won’t reach a final verdict on the proposed agreement to create a vast free-trade zone among the United States, Canada and Mexico until the negotiators complete their work--possibly as soon as early next week.

But the issue has already generated heated disagreement among his advisers. This internal debate reflects a long-standing division in the Clinton camp between policy advisers who tend to favor positions in favor of free trade, and political aides who have generally tried to shade those views with promises to protect American jobs and stand up to foreign competitors.

Some Clinton advisers fear that with Bush ready to pounce, almost anything short of an endorsement will revive old accusations that Clinton is a “pander bear” willing to trim his beliefs for political advantage. “It’s an important symbolic choice, and the more attention that’s given to it on the symbolic level the harder the choice becomes,” said one worried Clinton adviser.

In this camp, some hope that if Bush completes a “credible” agreement, Clinton would urge Congress to support it--while promising to open new negotiations in certain key areas if elected President. From a political perspective, these advisers believe, such an unexpected gesture would underline Clinton’s claim to represent new, independent thinking in the Democratic Party.

But others around Clinton fear that if he embraced Bush’s proposal too enthusiastically he would risk seeming insensitive to the fears of job losses in such crucial Midwest states as Michigan and Illinois.

These political advisers--as well as others who are skeptical on policy grounds that Bush will produce an acceptable treaty--are urging Clinton to move down the same path as House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). In a speech last week, Gephardt praised aspects of the nearly completed text but called for major revisions on issues ranging from environmental protection to worker retraining.

Clinton praised Gephardt’s speech--drafts of which were shared with the nominee’s campaign.

One senior Clinton policy aide said in an interview that while the nominee was unlikely to offer as specific a critique as Gephardt, Clinton might take the same broad approach, saying “he has general agreement with what’s in there, but that a couple of areas--labor standards and environmental standards--should be renegotiated” before Congress approves the agreement.

There is precedent for that: In 1988, congressional objections forced the Administration to renegotiate aspects of the free-trade agreement reached with Canada.

Clinton advisers supporting a tough line on the issue maintain that raising objections to the proposal would not be inconsistent with his earlier remarks. They note that Clinton, while repeatedly supporting the idea of a free-trade agreement, pointedly refused through the primaries to guarantee he would endorse the specific deal Bush negotiated.

That was, in fact, Clinton’s line during the Michigan primary in March--when he discussed his views on the proposed free-trade zone in greatest detail. With the state battered by the loss of auto jobs, and Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. stressing his opposition to a free-trade zone, Clinton tried, before mostly skeptical audiences, to defend his support for granting Bush expedited “fast track” authority to negotiate the agreement.

“My position was let Bush go negotiate the treaty, but I’m not going for it till I read all the fine print, cross every ‘t’ and dot every “ Clinton told one group in suburban Detroit. “If it genuinely raises the labor standards and environmental standards on the Mexican side of the border so that the wage differential was reduced somewhat, that would . . . slow the loss of higher wage jobs to Mexico as well as increase the wealth of Mexico and enable them to buy more from us.”

But, he added: “The Mexican-American free-trade agreement if it goes through under this Administration will probably be a net negative because they will be too easy on environmental and labor standards in Mexico and (Bush) will have no economic strategy for rebuilding . . . the industrial base of this country.”

Though some have already accused Clinton of shifting his position, his remarks in San Francisco this week virtually reprised his Michigan comments.

“If we raise the labor standards and . . . the environmental standards and have the right kind of long range plan to integrate the two economies, then they’ll do well,” he said this week. “But based on what I’ve seen, they (the Administration) are not going to do it.”

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.