Bush Vetoes Bill Limiting China Trade

President Bush vetoed legislation Monday that would have limited the renewal of China’s special trade privileges with the United States next year, saying that Beijing’s trade retaliation would “cost us . . . thousands of American jobs.”

Citing the bill sponsors’ goals of greater human rights in China, freer trade and weapons restrictions, Bush said that “engagement through our democratic, economic and educational institutions instead of confrontation offers the best hope for reform in China.”

Congress is expected to try to override the veto in the next week before adjourning for the elections. The House is likely to vote for the override; the decisive vote will be in the Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) suggested last week that he may break ranks with the Administration because of his anger over a Chinese threat to stop buying U.S. wheat after Bush approved Taiwan’s purchase of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets.

The issue has become snarled in election-year politics. The approval of the F-16 sale came soon after the jet’s manufacturer, General Dynamics, announced it would have to lay off workers at its Ft. Worth factory--causing economic fear in a state that Bush needs to win in November.

But China’s angry objection to the deal sent repercussions into Dole’s wheat-producing home state and other Great Plains areas that feared that the F-16 sale, beneficial to Texas, would be made at the expense of reduced wheat sales to China.

The legislation Bush vetoed Monday would attach conditions for renewing China’s most-favored-nation status, under which its exports can be sold in this country under the same lowered tariffs enjoyed by most other nations. Among conditions set by Congress are improvements in China’s human rights and trade policies and restraint in its export of dangerous arms and missiles.

China now has a trade surplus with the United States of $13 billion a year.

Mann reported from Washington and Gerstenzang from Dallas.