Trade Issues Are Piled Up on President’s Plate : Economy: He faces a vote on NAFTA, a meeting with Pacific Rim leaders and more--all testing his linkage of foreign policy and commerce.

For President Clinton, who rode into office arguing that foreign policy and economic policy must be one and the same, this is the week of decision.

On Wednesday, the House plans to cast its decisive vote on the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. The next day, Clinton is scheduled to fly to Seattle for a meeting--the first ever--of chiefs of state and government from around the Pacific to discuss trade and investment in the nations of Asia and the Pacific Rim.

And soon after he returns, Clinton faces a series of decisions on negotiating a new world trade agreement under the umbrella of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)--negotiations that face a Dec. 15 deadline--as well as talks with the Japanese over new trade rules due by Jan. 1.

“We’re seeing a triple-header coming up in the next few weeks with respect to international trade,” said Winston Lord, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Another senior Administration official joked, “We call it 40 days that could shake the world.”

If all goes well for the Administration, Clinton could wind up with a series of victories on trade issues that have been pursued without much success by his predecessors.

Joan Spero, undersecretary of state for economic affairs, told reporters last week that if the House passes NAFTA, “that will take us on a wave” into the Seattle meeting with Asian leaders and the final weeks of world trade talks.

“One of the benefits for the United States of NAFTA and (the Seattle meeting) is that they increase the United States’ leverage to negotiate openings (of trade barriers) around the world,” Robert Zoellick, a top economic policy-maker in the George Bush Administration, said last week.

Conversely, failure could quickly snowball--a worry that Administration officials have played upon in their pro-NAFTA lobbying.

“My nightmare is that we lose NAFTA and (Clinton) goes out to Seattle on a downer,” one senior Administration official admitted. Another U.S. official quipped that if the House votes against NAFTA on Wednesday, “I may jump out of the car on the way to Andrews,” the Air Force base from which Clinton will fly from the capital to Seattle on Thursday.

The Asian leaders whom the President will meet next weekend may view a congressional vote against NAFTA as a sign that the United States is turning toward protectionism. A defeat for NAFTA may make it easier for European leaders to say no to the Administration’s insistence in the world trade talks that they further open their markets.

As he moves into this period, Clinton has delivered a series of statements on trade policy and his underlying philosophy on such issues that are unusual for U.S. presidents, most of whom have considered trade issues dull and of little political benefit.

In his presidential campaign, Clinton often seemed to hesitate on trade--torn between his free trade inclinations and his need to court votes from protectionist segments of the Democratic Party. That, in turn, led to fears that Clinton would move toward a protectionist stance.

But in office, particularly in the past few weeks, Clinton has sounded a much more consistent pro-trade note.

In Clinton’s eyes--as he has argued repeatedly in recent weeks--open trade has become an essential part of the nation’s economic strategy.

“No one has shown how a wealthy country can grow wealthier and create more jobs unless there is global economic growth through trade,” Clinton said in a recent talk to a pro-NAFTA group at the White House.

That line of argument would have sounded quite natural coming from any of Clinton’s Republican predecessors. Two other aspects of Clinton’s trade policy, however, distinguish it from that of George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

The first difference involves trade’s domestic impact. Although Clinton argues forcefully that expanded trade will create many jobs in the United States, he and his aides admit that some workers--particularly in low-skill occupations--will lose jobs to foreign competition. To cope with that, Clinton has called for a new government program of job retraining and has urged business leaders to support it.

Trade agreements such as NAFTA have “become a catchall for the accumulated resentments of the past, the anxieties about the future and the frustrations of the present,” Clinton warned a pro-trade group of business leaders in New York recently.

That is why, Clinton said, business should support his calls for universal health care and guaranteed job training for the unemployed. “If we had all this in place, we’d have a more secure work force, and it would be easier to argue to them (that) we must face the future with confidence,” he said.

The second difference, Clinton aides insist, is a greater emphasis on settling trade problems with Japan--the source of the nation’s most persistent trade deficit--even at the expense of bruising political and security ties with that country.

Former Bush Administration officials note that they too tried to resolve the Japanese trade problems but that the Administration’s desire to avoid any damage to security ties complicated its trade offensives. Some former GOP officials now criticize Clinton for pushing too hard on trade.