It’s a Natural for Republicans : Free trade . . . does GOP want to fight that?

Free trade is one of the oldest ideas in the books, but now its time finally may have come.

Last year President Clinton lobbied for congressional passage of the historic North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress, which never should have been so difficult on an issue so clearly in the national interest, grudgingly came through. Now Congress bodes to be difficult again on another free-trade issue--the complex but vitally important General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. That passage is in some doubt is a commentary on how partisan and ridiculous Washington has become.

GATT, as it is called, is a titanic international treaty that now only needs to be approved by all the signatory nations to begin to lower trade import taxes on a variety of goods from around the world. The treaty would lower the cost of many imported goods gradually but steadily. For good reason Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) says that for the average American, GATT would represent the largest tax cut ever; because it would reduce U.S. import taxes on goods, consumer prices on many foreign articles would decline.

But GATT’s passage is now in doubt, especially in the Senate, where Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) are doing sentry duty for various domestic U.S. protectionist interests. Helms, who is to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has even threatened to hold all sorts of Clinton Administration business hostage if the GATT vote is not postponed.

Clinton should stand up to Helms, and so should the senator’s Republican colleagues. The GOP historically has been a signal champion of free trade. To retreat from that valuable economic philosophy now would be shameful treachery, done solely for partisan purposes: to embarrass the Democratic President.

This is not to say that every single aspect of GATT is unblemished. The disciplinary proceedings of the powerful World Trade Organization, to be created under GATT to monitor member compliance with all the mandated tariff-reducing, should be open to the press, not closed; this needs to be addressed. And here or there, individual member-state problems need more work.

But the totality of GATT, achieved after more than a decade of talks, is extraordinary. It moves the planet further from the bleak world of closed-door trading blocs and economically inefficient commerce. Now, thanks to the prodigious efforts of gifted American trade negotiators such as Carla Anderson Hills (under President George Bush) and Mickey Kantor (under Clinton), this jewel is all but a done deal. Thus Congress should approve the agreement in showdown votes that will come soon and not risk making itself the laughingstock of the world.