Balanced Diet of Deals Whets Appetite for Pact

The rhetoric may be lofty and the statistics persuasive, but the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement could come down to this: tomatoes and wheat.

In a determined, eleventh-hour effort to win ratification of the three-way trade agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada, the Clinton Administration on Tuesday offered two key concessions that could tip the scales in today’s critical House vote.

One is designed to lessen the fears of Florida lawmakers that their state’s vegetable growers will be deluged by cheap Mexican produce; the other addresses complaints by Southwesterners that an existing trade pact with Canada has been unfair to U.S. wheat farmers.

Although they represent only two of the dozens of concessions wrangled from the Administration by potential opponents of the trade agreement, vote-counters said they may be the ones that ultimately put Clinton over the top when the roll is called.

The Administration proposals underscore an eternal verity of presidential politics. No matter how well a chief executive makes the case for a controversial legislative initiative, it sometimes takes old-fashioned deal-cutting to clinch a victory.

“We have a number of ways of getting to the 218” votes needed, “but that is probably the most promising way--the Floridians and some of the people on wheat,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), a leading proponent of the trade agreement.

He said the vegetable deal alone could pull as many as nine undecided Floridians into the President’s camp, a potential conversion that would cost foes of the agreement dearly. As of late Tuesday, the Florida lawmakers had not made their intentions known.

The vegetable proposal is the latest in a series of pledges designed to placate Florida’s wary congressional delegation about the pact’s potential impact. The Administration already had offered concessions designed to protect Florida’s citrus industry from low-cost Mexican imports, securing the support of many of the state’s leading agricultural associations.

But with less than 48 hours to go before the showdown vote, Florida’s powerful Tomato Exchange was still holding out, warning that the pact could wreak havoc on a crop that pumps an estimated $571 million a year into the state’s economy.

On Tuesday morning, virtually the entire Florida delegation huddled privately with agriculture lobbyists and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Robert B. Crawford. Clinton himself had lobbied Crawford, interrupting his dinner the night before with a telephone call urging him to use his influence to help win support for the agreement.

Crawford, once an opponent of the pact, was sounding more favorably disposed when he emerged from the morning session with the state’s congressional delegation. “Clearly, concessions have been made for Florida agriculture,” he said. “I appreciate that very much.”

The primary question had been one of enforcement. The agreement already contained a provision under which the United States could reimpose tariffs against Mexican vegetables if a surge of cheap Mexican imports disrupts the domestic produce market.

But lawmakers had worried that U.S. officials would not become aware of such a deluge in time to protect this country’s growers. To respond to that concern, the Administration and Mexican negotiators agreed to a more sophisticated early warning system.

By late Tuesday, it was not certain that the new arrangement had won over the wary Florida lawmakers, although Administration officials expressed confidence that it would.

Meanwhile, a last-minute concession involving wheat already was paying off. Three Western Democrats--Texan Bill Sarpalius and Oklahomans Glenn English and Bill Brewster--said the wheat concession had persuaded them to vote for the agreement.

English said he had been complaining for more than a year to the George Bush and Clinton administrations that the existing free trade arrangement with Canada was not being enforced, allowing that country to unfairly subsidize its wheat farmers.

That, he said, explained why the U.S. share of Mexico’s wheat market had fallen from almost 70% in 1989 to about 16% last year.

In a letter, Clinton promised that he would instruct Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy “to begin discussions with the Canadian government to seek to remedy the negative effects of their subsidy practices.” The letter avoided specifics.

* RELATED COVERAGE: A20, A21, A22, D1