A Frenzied Finale in the Trade Arena : As Bush era winds down, U.S. negotiator is pressing for an eleventh-hour breakthrough

Carla Anderson Hills is in Geneva on her last mission as U.S. trade representative. She is at the center of a frenzied effort to produce an eleventh-hour breakthrough in world trade talks before the Bush Administration leaves office.

If Hills wins agreement on a basis for a trade liberalization accord, President Bush will have succeeded in his dogged effort to craft a “new world order” in commerce. Bill Clinton, as President, then could direct his effort toward fine-tuning the accord.

Admittedly, such an agreement would not solve all the world’s trading problems; but it would help to revive the bogged-down multilateral trade talks, which began in Uruguay in 1986 under the auspices of the international trade body known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In the unhappy event that negotiations once again fall through, Clinton’s U.S. trade representative-designate, Mickey Kantor, must move quickly and adroitly to bring a GATT agreement in by March, when the United States’ negotiating authority from Congress expires.

Kantor and Hills, as Californians, both understand that greater access to world markets would further boost the state’s booming exports of high technology and transportation equipment.

To push the talks along, Hills now is focusing on tariff cuts around the world for manufactured products. Progress is hard to judge, but a key meeting of trade negotiators that had been scheduled for Friday has been postponed to Tuesday, the eve of the inauguration. That can be interpreted with hope or pessimism. But what matters is what is delivered Tuesday.

U.S. consumers stand to benefit enormously from more competitive markets that would push down prices on a variety of goods ranging from clothes to crystal.

In California, where international trade has been an engine of growth in an otherwise lackluster economy, a completed GATT agreement together with the North American Free Trade Agreement would keep the export pump roaring. California products from corn to plastics to biotechnology all would be in greater demand, and that would translate into much needed jobs.