Clinton Sounds Upbeat Note at APEC Summit

As he joined a gathering of Pacific Rim leaders Sunday, President Clinton declared his optimism about Asia’s economic health and tried to bolster his trading partners’ confidence in the U.S. by predicting that Congress will give him the “fast-track” trade authority it recently denied him.

“I think this is a time for confidence in the future of Asia and confidence in the future of our relationship with them,” Clinton said after a meeting with the summit’s host, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

At the 18-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Clinton joined a chorus of other leaders intent on offering assurances of the region’s fundamental stability and renewing their commitment to freer trade despite the dire economic news coming out of Asia day after day.

While the leaders met in conference rooms and on the golf course here, officials in Japan were grappling with the collapse of one of their largest securities firms, and International Monetary Fund officials landed in Seoul to begin assessing the damage to South Korea’s economy and the size of its multibillion-dollar bailout.

Clinton asserted that the financial turmoil that has spread through much of Asia in recent months represents “a few glitches” that do not take away from the overall trend of extraordinary economic growth in the region over the last decade. “We are working through them,” he added.

He also said that his inability to press Congress to give him fast-track authority to negotiate trade deals that cannot be altered by Congress was similarly a temporary setback and did not signal a permanent retrenchment by the United States into a protectionist stance.

“I would not read too much significance into the fact that the vote was not held at the end of the last session of Congress,” Clinton said. “I think Congress will act on fast-track legislation early next year, and we’re going to do our best to prevail.”

The upbeat pronouncements struck an important tone at the opening of the fifth annual APEC leaders’ summit. The group’s previous meetings have taken place under rosier circumstances, when Asian leaders were basking in the glow of booming economies and Clinton was reveling in his successful efforts to expand commerce through the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. This time, the group is convening under the clouds of the economic troubles in Asia and the setback for Clinton’s fast-track effort.

Over the next two days of meetings, the leaders will have their work cut out for them to try to counteract the negative climate and promote APEC’s purpose--to foster freer trade among the countries in the Pacific region.

Given the extreme financial difficulties that many member nations are confronting, U.S. officials consider this gathering a key opportunity to persuade the leaders of those countries to remain open to trade liberalization and resist the urge to retreat into protectionist shells.

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The Clinton administration’s efforts to convey this message were complicated by Congress’ refusal to grant fast-track trade authority to the president. Although U.S. officials were taking pains to reassure their trading partners of America’s commitment to freer trade, the fast-track disappointment clearly affected the atmosphere of the talks.

“It’s had some impact,” Commerce Secretary Bill Daley said. “It would be disingenuous to think otherwise.”

U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, however, said the subject was raised less often than she had expected.

“It barely came up,” she said. “I thought it would dominate.” The reason other countries have not pressed it, she added, is that “it is incomprehensible to these countries that the president would not have this authority.”

U.S. officials at the summit were clearly trying to use the occasion to tell Congress how important that authority is for the country’s economic health.

Without fast-track authority, the U.S. would be unable to fulfill the agreements that the APEC countries announced Saturday to reduce tariffs in nine sectors, which accounted for a total of $1.5 trillion in global trade in 1995. The deals, which are widely supported by U.S. businesses, involve a wide range of products, including toys, forest products, chemicals, telecommunications equipment and medical equipment and instruments.

Barshefsky said the deals would represent a big win for U.S. consumers and businesses: They would lower the cost of a wide range of imported products while increasing the export potential of American companies because U.S. tariffs are currently lower than those of most other countries.

Saturday’s trade agreement faces serious challenges on other fronts. Mexico and Chile have said they will not participate in the agreement, arguing that the best way to succeed in opening markets is through regional or global agreements and not sector by sector. Since the agreement is voluntary, they fear that governments will only give up the areas that don’t hurt their economies and refuse to relinquish protection of their most lucrative industries.

“We have negotiated several trade agreements, and we sense the right way to negotiate is globally because it allows trade-offs,” said Herminio Blanco Mendoza, the Mexican secretary of trade and industrial development.

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The leaders are also expected to use the session as a chance to urge developing nations to make commitments in advance of an international meeting next month in Kyoto, Japan, on global warming.

“We will use this meeting at APEC to talk to some of the big countries, like China, to engage them,” Chretien said at the news conference with Clinton.

There appeared to be some tension between Clinton and Chretien over an international treaty to ban land mines, which Canada brokered and the United States has refused to support because it does not offer an exception for mines protecting U.S. troops stationed on the Korean peninsula.

Chretien said he will continue to put “gentle pressure on the president” to change his mind.

Clinton, however, said the U.S. position was decided by those who drafted the treaty “and decided that our antitank weapons were not entitled to be protected.”

“My first responsibility, since I may have to send our troops into conflict situations on behalf of a lot of the nations that have signed on to this treaty, is to make sure that if I do that I can protect them,” Clinton said somewhat sharply.

The president spent his afternoon on a soggy golf course with Chretien and Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Despite a steady rain, the leaders played 18 holes--and talked some business.