The Toughest Job in Town: Selling NAFTA

The cover photograph in a recent issue of Roll Call, the wonkish but well-read Capitol Hill newspaper, showed Rep. Robert T. Matsui and three House members milling about at a pro-NAFTA news conference. The headline read: “Well, We’ve Got Four Votes,” a wry reminder of the grim arithmetic facing the trade treaty’s backers.

Somewhere among the House’s 435 members, a majority of 218 must be cajoled into supporting the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement. Matsui, the genial Democratic legislator from Sacramento, has been charged with finding those elusive votes.

To which some handicappers say: fat chance.

Senate passage is considered probable, but House approval is seen as difficult.

Had he known that Clinton would not be fully engaged in the battle until late September or that the Ross Perot-led anti-NAFTA forces would have months to dominate the debate, he might have thought better of the assignment.

“I feel strongly that this is a major foreign policy decision,” Matsui said recently. “But I’m no masochist.” Indeed, it is Matsui’s energy and pragmatism that made him an obvious choice to sell NAFTA to his skeptical colleagues. A well-respected eight-termer, seven on the Ways and Means Committee, Matsui is known for his articulate views on free trade and a down-to-earth lobbying style that relies more on substance than heavy-handed badgering.

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In the mid-1980s, Matsui was recruited for similar duty during an overhaul of the federal tax code.

“Maybe later you can start twisting arms,” says Matsui. “But at first you have to assure people that the treaty will create jobs and address their environmental concerns. You also have to convince them that a vote for NAFTA won’t hurt them politically.”

NAFTA, which eventually would bring down most trade and investment barriers among the United States, Canada and Mexico, has been portrayed by its foes as the wrong medicine at the wrong time for the colicky U.S. economy.

And despite increased lobbying pressure, many House members still see the treaty as a job-loser.

Playing off Perot’s famous warning of a “giant sucking sound” of American jobs draining south to Mexico, Matsui entreats fence-sitters not to be “sucked in” by such statements.

“I find many of the opponents’ arguments to be really alarmist. Mexico’s economy is only 2% the size of ours. The argument that millions of jobs will disappear instantly are just not true,” Matsui said.

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The difficulties Matsui faces in the House as a whole are reflected in the California delegation. Only five of the state’s 30 Democrats have come out in favor of the treaty, and about 17 of 22 Republicans are expected to follow suit. In the end, Matsui predicts only about a dozen state Democrats will fall in line.

In the Senate, Barbara Boxer is an ardent foe, and Dianne Feinstein is strongly leaning against it.

“We’re making incremental gains, but a lot of members who seem willing to commit are not willing to do so publicly,” Matsui said.

Because of the deep division over the treaty, Matsui said, many members are waiting as long as they can to declare their position.

President Clinton is devoting more time to the issue and starting to hold face-to-face meetings with recalcitrant House members. Matsui is counting on an all-out effort from the White House to close the vote gap. Indeed, most observers say Clinton will have to “bleed” in the NAFTA battle in order to win it.

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Should the intensity level in the executive branch start to waver, Matsui’s phone calls at least will be returned. His wife, Doris Matsui, is deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and is in charge of drumming up support for NAFTA among corporate CEOs, environmentalists, educators and any other group that needs persuading.

Stationed at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Matsuis have reluctantly accepted the mantle as one of Washington’s new “power couples.”

Sometimes a visiting group will first be schmoozed by Doris at the White House and then wind up at a Capitol Hill lunch to hear Bob lay down his reasons for approving the treaty.

“We try to keep a wall between the two roles,” says Rep. Matsui. “But when I hear that a certain group has just met with (Treasury) Secretary Bentsen, I say, ‘Hey, Doris, I have to get their number.’

“Sometimes, it’s difficult,” Matsui says jokingly, “because we don’t have the same sort of professional courtesies. One day my schedule got all scrambled and I asked my staff why. They said Doris called.”

Should Matsui pull off an improbable NAFTA victory, it will stand him in good stead to someday take over the reins of the Ways and Means Committee. If the vote fails, he’ll be seen as having been enlisted in a mission doomed from the start.

“If we win, it will be very close,” says Matsui, equably. “If we lose, it will be a blowout.”