White House Starts Final Big Push for GATT Pact : Trade: Administration officials and congressional leaders are nearly done negotiating cost issues.

In an effort almost lost in the roiling debate over health care reform, the Clinton Administration is beginning a final concerted push to win approval of U.S. participation in a massive global trade agreement, optimistic that it will be able to nail down its second major political victory on the trade front--and one that eluded the two previous Administrations.

Senior White House officials and congressional leaders are nearing completion of arduous, often contentious, negotiations over how to meet the trade plan’s $12-billion price tag.

The opposition, though active and vocal, has been unable to coalesce into a political force that could pose a serious threat to passage of the legislation implementing participation in the agreement.

The White House’s goal is to slip the 22,000-page trade pact into the legislative mill by the beginning of August and quickly push it through to final approval--despite the more visible work on health care--before the House and Senate begin their summer recesses in the middle of the month, a senior Administration official said Wednesday.

That timetable has prompted criticism from Congress, where Administration allies are concerned that failure to meet the schedule will suggest that momentum favoring the agreement is slowing.

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But whether Congress acts before it leaves for its August recess or after it returns, increasingly optimistic Administration and congressional sources predict that the plan--whose goal is to cut tariffs by roughly one-third and liberalize trade rules to stimulate world commerce--will pass each house with bipartisan support.

After having spent two days this week in negotiations with congressional trade experts, a senior Administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday, “I am more cautiously optimistic than I was 48 hours ago.”

According to the Administration’s estimate--which is more conservative than some--the trade plan would expand the U.S. economy by $100 billion in its first years and be an important first step in raising U.S. exports to the $1-trillion range, more than twice the current level, over the next 15 years.

The pact, negotiated over seven years, would expand the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which took effect in 1947, and replace it as the international trade rule-enforcing body with a new Geneva-based operation to be known as the World Trade Organization. That body would be given greater authority than its predecessor over the more than 120 member nations.

Opponents in the United States are concerned that bureaucrats in Switzerland would be in a position to overrule local, state and federal laws governing such sensitive matters as food safety, environmental protection and labor rights by decreeing that such laws and regulations serve protectionist purposes and therefore stifle free trade.

Among the other points raised by opponents and wary supporters:

* Will the new rules mean that the United States and other countries would be restricted in efforts to protect home industries from foreign products dumped at below-production costs?

* Will key provisions in U.S. trade laws intended to pressure other nations into opening their markets to U.S. products be overruled because they could result in trade sanctions?

* Will the Administration succeed in keeping its authority to negotiate trade agreements on a “fast-track” basis (this prohibits time-consuming and agreement-threatening amendments) when the completed pact is sent to Congress for approval? That would come into play when the Administration seeks to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement to include Chile.

Organized labor has recently intensified its opposition to the fast-track procedure, a leading congressional expert on trade issues said, and the trade agreement being advanced by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, omits it.

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Finally, there is the sticky question of what participation in the trade plan will cost.

There is little dispute over the Administration’s assertion that the increased commerce the pact would bring would, in the end, produce more government income--as much as $3.90 for every $1 lost to lowered tariffs, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor says. But federal budget law requires that for every $1 lost in revenue, there must be a $1 cut in spending or a $1 increase in taxes or other income.

Under a plan outlined by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, the Administration will recommend spending cuts of $8 billion, including $1.6 billion in reduced agriculture subsidies.