Fast-Track Bill ‘Not Dead,’ Clinton Says

On the heels of one of his presidency’s major defeats, President Clinton vowed Monday that his quest for broader power to negotiate trade deals is “not dead.” As if on cue, all sides in the inflammatory issue began bracing for further battle.

Congress, meanwhile, responded to the demise of the White House “fast-track” campaign--an eleventh-hour effort that featured efforts to win votes with a raft of promises--with confusion and finger-pointing. The impact of one such deal, involving the controversial use of sampling techniques in the 2000 census, remained unclear.

And free-trade advocates warned that the United States would pay a price in world markets and that U.S. officials would lose stature at international gatherings, starting with an Asian-Pacific meeting in Canada this month.

“This is not dead . . . , “ Clinton told reporters gathered on the South Lawn of the White House. “What we’re going to do now is regroup a little bit and find a way to succeed, and I think we’ll find a way to do that.”

He added: “I will be very surprised if we are not successful in developing a bipartisan, constructive, successful approach to fast-track before this Congress is over” next year.

Under the authority sought by Clinton, a president could make trade deals with other countries that Congress would have to accept or reject in their entirety. Some now expect the debate to shift to more scaled-down proposals focused on particular industries, rather than the sweeping power--held by previous presidents--that Clinton wanted.

Meanwhile, there was a debate over a deal Clinton made to win support for fast-track. Congressional Democrats were furious over terms of an agreement that the White House made with GOP leaders late Sunday to allow the use of sampling to count the population in a census dress-rehearsal scheduled for April in Sacramento.

Clinton previously had promised to veto any legislation that threatened the use of sampling in the 2000 census, but this deal leaves plenty of time before 2000 for Republicans to outlaw the method. They fear that sampling would increase the count of Democratic-leaning voters.

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Now that the fast-track vote is delayed until next year, sampling advocates are pressing the White House to renegotiate the deal in a way that would protect plans to use sampling techniques in 2000.

The congressional black and Latino caucuses were weighing whether to vote in a bloc against the spending bill for the Commerce, Justice and State departments, which includes census funding. Sampling, they argued, is important because it could increase the count of minorities, who tend to be the most undercounted groups in the national census. Congress must pass the spending bill and Clinton must sign it before lawmakers can recess for the year.

A White House spokesman, in an apparent effort to appease angry Democrats, said Monday that the details of Clinton’s deal with GOP leaders “are all sort of being worked out right now” and that the president could still change his mind.

On the central trade issue, House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.)--one of the president’s strongest fast-track opponents--said Monday that he would introduce his own fast-track legislation, possibly this week. Gephardt’s plan, backed by organized labor, would impose on U.S. trading partners higher environmental and labor standards than past trade accords.

“I happen to believe that, if we work hard enough at it with the president . . . we can get a bipartisan majority in the Congress to support it,” Gephardt said.

But House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) said that Republicans are not likely to endorse a trade policy drafted by Democratic leaders. “I think it’s important enough [that] we ought to try whenever we have a reasonable chance to succeed,” he said, adding that “chances could improve by March” to pass a fast-track bill.

Critics of Clinton’s proposal argued that the defeat was a victory for working Americans who have lost their jobs to countries that skimp on standards Americans take for granted.

“Americans understand that the question is not whether we will or should trade--of course we should,” said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, which spearheaded opposition to fast-track. “They understand there is no turning back from our increasingly global economy.”

But, he added, “the message is clear. The next generation of trade policies must respect people as well as property and factor in workers’ and environmental concerns along with business interests.”

Clinton’s allies retorted Monday that America would pay a price for the failure to expand his authority on trade issues. In the short run, they said, it could undermine U.S. negotiators seeking to set an agenda on issues of information and medical technologies and environmental services at the Asian-Pacific conference in Canada.

“[The president] will go to that summit weakened,” said Jeffrey J. Schott, a scholar at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.

More broadly, Clinton’s uncertain status to negotiate trade deals may work against the United States in Santiago, Chile, next April, when nations throughout the Americas are scheduled to begin talks on a hemispheric free-trade zone to take effect by 2005.

“Latin American leaders will not seriously negotiate with the United States if we don’t have fast-track authority,” Schott said.

The lack of fast-track authority also poses potential problems for international talks scheduled over the next few years involving trade in agriculture, services, government procurement and other areas.

And it appears to wipe out possibilities for broad bilateral trade deals with Chile and other nations, possibly including New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

“They [the Chileans] don’t want to negotiate once with the administration and once with the Congress,” said Jay Ziegler, spokesman for the U.S. trade representative’s office.

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Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Faye Fiore and Sam Fulwood III contributed to this story.