Entry Likely to Be an Issue in U.S. Elections Next Year

Supporters of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization on Monday predicted congressional approval next year, but opponents of the deal vowed an all-out fight, virtually ensuring that Sino-U.S. relations will become an issue in next year’s presidential and some congressional campaigns.

One indication, just hours after the announcement in Beijing of an agreement between U.S. and Chinese negotiators: Gary Bauer and Steve Forbes, two contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, renewed their denunciation of granting China WTO membership.

Joining them, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, called “the fevered rush to admit China to the WTO a grave mistake” and said organized labor will fight it.

Such odd-couple alliances notwithstanding, Congress is widely expected to endorse the agreement.

“I’m predicting it right now: We will succeed,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), an influential WTO champion who chairs the House Rules Committee.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said he wanted to review the agreement in detail but added that China’s membership in the WTO would represent “significant progress for both nations.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) took a slightly more guarded stance, saying he wanted to reserve judgment.

But Dreier had no doubt about the outcome in Congress.

“Republicans have traditionally stood for free trade,” he said.

A number of corporations and business alliances endorsed the agreement and said they would work for its ratification.

“If the agreement is one that American business can support, and if China reaches agreement with the other WTO members, the U.S. chamber will launch a major lobbying campaign” to back the agreement, said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The issue is not likely to figure much in the Democratic contest for the presidential nomination, since both Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Bill Bradley support free trade.

But not so on the GOP side.

The matter could prove nettlesome for Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Both support free trade. But each is courting party conservatives, and backing the WTO agreement may not sit well with that constituency.

In a statement, Bush said he welcomed the news of the breakthrough but added that he would reserve final judgment until he had reviewed the agreement’s specifics.

Bush also called, as has Forbes, for Taiwan’s admission to the WTO.

One of the strongest denunciations of the agreement came from Bauer.

“The Republican Congress must say no to WTO membership for China until such time as Beijing stops threatening Taiwan, ceases the transfer of advanced military technologies to renegade regimes and begins to respect even the most basic and fundamental human rights,” Bauer said.

In addition to union members who worry about losing jobs to lower-paid Chinese workers, opponents of the WTO agreement include human rights activists who say China should not be rewarded unless it allows greater freedoms, and environmentalists who are concerned about the degradation of natural resources.

Still others have complained about allegations of Chinese espionage and improper technology transfers to China.

Disclosures of illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese to the Clinton campaign also have helped sour relations between Washington and Beijing--and prompted President Clinton to walk away from near-agreement on a WTO deal in April while Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was in Washington.

“There’s going to be enormous pressure on the right and on the left,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento).

He and other backers say WTO membership and other ways of engaging the Chinese are the most effective means of bringing about more acceptable conduct by Beijing on an array of issues.

But Patrick J. Buchanan, who has quit the GOP to seek the Reform Party’s presidential nomination, disagreed.

“By bringing China into the WTO, America will surrender all the economic leverage we have over the Communist Chinese regime to a collection of global bureaucrats,” he said. “I will fight it with everything I have right through November 2000.”

Although backers of WTO membership for China are optimistic, they say the more quickly the issue is taken up by Congress, the better its chances for ratification.

“The later this issue gets put off, the more it can be used as a magnet for the much wider range of China issues,” said Brink Lindsey, an analyst with the Center of Trade Policy at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he will schedule hearings on the treaty next year.

“It represents a victory for free trade and a victory for the millions of Americans who stand to benefit as a result,” he said.