Global Trade Pact Faces Unexpected Struggle for Ratification : Congress: The White House is pressing for approval this year. But hesitant lawmakers may delay once-lauded replacement of GATT.

With time running short on the congressional calendar, the White House finds itself suddenly struggling to win passage of a once-lauded global trade agreement against unexpected opposition and ever-worsening odds.

Legislation that would massively overhaul the world’s trading regulations and slash tariffs by an average of 40% is sitting in a bubbling pot of politically risky issues facing Congress when it returns next week.

The opposition is not as vocal or emotional as the coalition that tried to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement a year ago. But it has the staying power of a low-grade fever.

Making things worse for the Clinton Administration, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), an influential figure whose aggressive support could provide crucial momentum, has instead called for delaying a vote on the agreement until next year.

Dole’s recommendation has shaken the White House, although Administration officials insist that passage this year remains a top priority.

“The President is absolutely committed to ratification this year,” U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor told reporters earlier this week.

The pact has broad bipartisan support, owing in part to its origins. It was largely negotiated during the Ronald Reagan and George Bush presidencies and was completed under the Clinton Administration.

Still, Dole’s call for a delay has left some congressional backers of the trade accord nearly ready to raise their hands in surrender.

But in the view of some influential trade advocates, to delay is to court disaster.

The head of the international organization that oversees world trade is warning that a U.S. failure to quickly ratify the agreement could be a fatal blow, leading other nations already uneasy with the trade plan to toss aside the progress made over seven years of negotiations and throw global prosperity into a protectionist-fueled tailspin.

The pact would replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which since 1947 has set the rules governing international commerce, with the World Trade Organization. In addition to beginning deep cuts in import taxes, it would reduce government subsidies, open markets for food and consumer goods and extend protection to the growing areas of commerce, including certain financial services.

After seven years of on-again, off-again negotiations, the agreement was completed in Geneva last December, given final approval at a largely ceremonial meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, in April, and dispatched to some 120 nations for ratification. Now, it is on a path that few Administration officials, if any, thought six months ago would be as strewn with boulders as it has become.

In remarks aimed at the United States, Peter Sutherland, the director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, said recently that failure of the major trading partners--the United States, Japan and the 12-member European Union--could have serious consequences “for the U.S. economy and for the world as a whole.”

So far, 26 nations have ratified the agreement, which its proponents still hope will take effect Jan. 1, 1995. Approval by the others is widely seen as depending on ratification by the United States, which has more international trade at stake than any other nation.

“It’s hanging by a thread,” said a congressional aide deeply involved in trade matters. “I still think it will happen. But I get less sure each day. You’re talking about doing the most major trade agreement in history in a two-week period.”

Opposition to the agreement has joined such disparate figures as Ralph Nader, conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, the radio talk show host.

Yet there has been no central figure galvanizing the opposition, as Ross Perot did last year during the debate over the three-way trade pact with Mexico and Canada. That absence, said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist who has written frequently on Congress, is good news for the Administration.

“Politicians are always looking for an issue to highlight. They’re good at scanning the horizon for inflammatory issues. The fact no one has done that with (the trade agreement) says something about its political muzzle velocity,” he said.

Nor has the world trade pact become a strong current running through the congressional election campaign. But attention now being paid to the pact has surprised some members of Congress.

Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), who has conducted 31 town meetings in recent weeks, said that “people talked to me about the WTO (World Trade Organization) even in New Mexico.”

To Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), who is the acting chairman of the House subcommittee on trade, the opposition offered by Dole is worrisome.

“We probably need to pass” the trade accord, Matsui said, referring to the political boost that a victory might give Democrats in a year when they fear there are few congressional accomplishments to tout. “But that could be problematic given what Dole has said. If Republicans pick that up, that’s going to hurt us.”

What Dole suggested was not rejection of the agreement. Instead, he wrote in the Wichita Eagle, a newspaper in his state, “There is no reason we cannot address this important issue next year.”

It is an idea that has been taken up by opponents of the agreement and one group carried the message to Capitol Hill on pillows, sent to each congressional office, bearing this thought: “GATT--Why don’t you just sleep on it.”

Dole says that the agreement will “help the American farmer and the American manufacturer” but he wants more time to determine how much authority the new World Trade Organization could exercise.

His maneuver, although pegged to the substance of the agreement, could bring political ramifications:

By championing a delay, Dole, who is widely believed to hold presidential ambitions, could inoculate himself from criticism if speedy passage becomes an issue in the 1996 presidential campaign.

“I don’t think the political calculus is divorced from this,” said a source well acquainted with the ins and outs of Capitol Hill.

Still, there remain several unanswered questions:

Having called for a delay, will Dole actively work against a vote this year? Will a campaign under way in the congressional district of Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who is likely to become the House Republican leader in the next term, sway him to abandon his weak support for the agreement? And will organized labor, which largely opposed NAFTA, throw its resources into the fight against the global trade plan, leading a number of House members in tight races to oppose the pact?

With Congress returning Tuesday in a mood to take quick action on the remaining legislation and then return home to campaign, the White House has little time to find the answers and turn them in its favor.

Times staff writers Karen Tumulty and Ronald Brownstein contributed to this story.