NAFTA Takes Toll in Anger, Split Allies : Politics: Vote shakes up the legislative process and that could affect the fate of Clinton’s domestic agenda. Union leaders swear vengeance.

The cumulative cost of President Clinton’s victory in the battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement appears likely to climb much higher than the price tag of protecting endangered farmers or cleaning up a polluted border.

While NAFTA supporters hailed the House debate one of the most principled in recent congressional history, the vote on Wednesday ripped apart longstanding political alliances, shook up a legislative process that will determine the fate of the President’s domestic agenda, and complicated the shaky talks to redraw crucial global trading rules.

As the Senate began its debate on the trade plan Thursday with a vote expected by Saturday and approval considered certain, Clinton said that Vice President Al Gore and Thomas (Mack) McLarty, the White House chief of staff, would visit Mexico City soon to discuss “how best to launch this great new era in North American relations.”

Supporters of the trade plan have argued that by eliminating tariffs, quotas and other barriers in Mexico, it would open up that country as a new market for products made in the United States, encouraging the development of higher-paying export-fueled jobs here. Approval of the pact also was seen as a tremendous boost for the Administration, which pulled together against long odds to achieve perhaps Clinton’s biggest victory to date.

Yet as congressional leaders and White House officials tried to get back to normal operations, defeated union leaders angrily said that they would seek vengeance against certain House members who switched sides and voted for the trade pact.

*

At the same time, a senior congressional aide said, the bargaining undertaken by the White House to gain additional votes for the trade plan already has made it difficult for the President’s allies to sign up supporters for his health care reform plan.

The reason? Some House members say they would rather withhold their support to see what Clinton is willing to offer them later on--a blunt reference to the NAFTA vote-winning deals that were made to protect tomato growers, for example, or provide funding for a North American Development Bank to help pay the environmental cleanup costs.

In short, Washington’s political playing field one day after the vote was littered with the shards of broken alliances and bitter predictions of nasty retribution.

There was, however, a ray of sunshine from Europe, where fears that rejection of the North American trade plan would signal U.S. movement toward protectionism. Such a development would have doomed the still-uncertain push to complete the modernization of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade by Dec. 15.

GATT regulates global commerce. Economists and national political leaders argue that a relaxation of trading rules and lowering of tariffs offer the best hope for reviving economies around the world.

As the House vote neared, said Stuart Eizenstat, U.S. ambassador to the European Community, the nations of the Common Market saw the debate as “a symbol and watershed in American political and economic history.”

Sentiment in Europe had taken a 180-degree turn several weeks ago, Eizenstat said in an interview from Brussels. Earlier fears of a strong new regional trading block made up of the United States, Mexico and Canada were replaced by growing concerns that a new protectionism would take hold in America that would make it more difficult to negotiate a new GATT plan.

But on this side of the Atlantic, Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO and one of the most vociferous opponents of the North American agreement, said the deals made by the Administration to win votes for NAFTA could bring new difficulties with the Europeans. In particular, deals made to protect elements of U.S. agriculture from Mexican competition may fuel demands for equivalent protection of European farmers.

“I should expect that the farmers of France have been watching these last-minute deals that were made to protect crop after crop, product after product, with some understanding and some glee,” Kirkland said.

The labor chief led the day-after recriminations. “We will not forget those who voted against us,” he said.

But the strongest language came from Bill Bywater, president of the International Union of Electrical Workers, who said bluntly: “We’re going to make sure we get even at the polls.”

While the wounds in Congress will be patched up, said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), the split between labor and Democrats who voted for the trade agreement will take longer.

“It’s pretty deep,” he said. And he forecast continued animosity over such approaching trade issues as the global negotiations and commerce with China.

Clinton launched a personal attempt to repair his ripped relations with organized labor, which for the first time in four presidential campaigns worked successfully on behalf of the Democratic candidate in 1992.

Flying to Seattle to attend the Asian economic conference, he called Kirkland and the two House Democratic officials, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Rep. David E. Bonior of Michigan, who led the opposition in the House.

“The healing process has begun,” insisted White House chief of staff McLarty.

But an analysis of the vote conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research organization that fought the trade plan, produced more disheartening news for the Clinton White House. It found that in states that have swung to winning presidential candidates--to Clinton in 1992, for example, and to George Bush in 1988--there was strong opposition to the agreement.

*

Times staff writers Michael Ross and Mark Bousian in Washington, and David Lauter in Seattle, contributed to this story.