Rival U.S. Camps Prepare for Battle on China Trade

WASHINGTON — The images of China are cheerful, the mood one of hope: Modern office workers, a teacher and her students, young men playing basketball under blue skies. “Opportunity and unlimited potential,” trumpets the message from some of America’s largest corporations.

Now, switch the channel: The images of China are dark, the mood one of gloom. Workers labor under guard, women struggle in a sweatshop. Wages are as low as 13 cents an hour, warns the AFL-CIO advertisement, complaining that China routinely breaks trade rules, “flooding our markets, draining American jobs.”

Those starkly different visions of the world’s most populous nation will bombard key congressional districts this spring in what is shaping up as an exceptionally fierce clash of special interests over America’s relationship with China.

The battle was officially joined last week when the Senate Finance Committee unveiled legislation to normalize China’s economic ties with the United States.

Preparing for a congressional showdown in May or June, special interests are leaping from the sidelines to the front lines of what has become the most agonizing trade dilemma in years.

Advocates are targeting key

congressional districts with television ads, spearheading letter-writing campaigns, handing out fliers, jawboning lawmakers and rallying in local districts, all in a fervent bid to seal the outcome.

Corporate America has committed millions of dollars to the effort, inspired by dreams of a Chinese marketplace that has gripped the imagination of Western capitalists for years.

Organized labor has responded by unleashing an army of worker-organizers who fear their jobs will be sacrificed to a Chinese rival that refuses to abide by the kind of workplace standards that are taken for granted in the U.S. and most of the rest of the advanced world.

“This is going to be fought at the congressional district level--district by district, industry by industry,” said John Schachter, a spokesman for the Business Roundtable, which represents many of the nation’s largest corporations and expects to spend as much as $10 million on the effort.

A priority for President Clinton, the legislation’s success is far from certain. It is the administration’s top lobbying effort in Congress, overseen by Commerce Secretary William Daley. White House officials, keenly aware that business did not lead the charge on certain other recent trade initiatives, are watching corporate America’s increased effort with guarded optimism.

Taken on its own, the vote on whether to grant China permanent normal trade status, instead of subjecting it to annual renewals, would be of acute interest to U.S. workers and their managers. China has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and is expected to join the World Trade Organization later this year, when it will offer most nations easier access to its long-restricted markets.

Yet there is another reason that corporate America and organized labor are focusing intently on the rising debate: Many see it as a critical moment in defining the future ground rules for a rapidly changing global economy.

Critics of globalization argue that China should not be rewarded with permanent normal trade status until it shows a commitment to U.S. standards of decency in the workplace. Competing interests reply that emerging nations, including China, inevitably will embrace Western-style political and economic reforms as they become more affluent, with the help of global trade.

On top of that, advocates of routine U.S.-China economic ties are seizing on the vote as the chance to revive a U.S. policy of opening foreign markets that has largely been stalled since NAFTA.

“This could very well be the most important free-trade vote in a generation,” said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In the Southern California congressional district of Grace Napolitano, the pressures are very real. The Democratic congresswoman, whose home base includes blue-collar, Democratic enclaves to the east of Los Angeles, such as Montebello, La Puente, Pico Rivera and Norwalk, recently got an earful from business leaders on the presumed benefits of closer ties with Beijing.

Yet business groups who set up the meeting at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Commerce have competition: Napolitano, who used to chair a key trade panel in the state Assembly, has also met a steady stream of visitors from the United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, all of whom aired their concerns about losing U.S. jobs.

“Labor continues to speak to us about the loss of good-paying jobs,” Napolitano said in an interview. “Business keeps saying they’re creating jobs. Who’s right?”

Like many members of Congress, Napolitano is struggling to find the right answer amid conflicting political pressures: “I need to do what’s best for my district,” she said. “They’re the ones who sent me here--with tremendous help from labor, I might add.”

Labor is promising to keep up the pressure. In coming days, the AFL-CIO plans a campaign of rallies, teach-ins, public meetings and television ads in selected congressional districts around the country, largely timed to confront lawmakers with the issue when they are home during the April recess.

“We never expect to outspend business--but we do expect to out-organize them,” said Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s assistant director of public policy in Washington.

Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) felt the heat when steelworkers and others recently staged a rally at a boot factory in his district. The LaCrosse plant, where Kind’s sister works, has lost hundreds of jobs, and many blame Chinese competition for at least some of the pain. At the same time, Kind’s western Wisconsin district has more cows than people, and the dairy farmers there hope to benefit from greater access to China.

Kind, who supports normal trade ties, expressed frustration that the pro-trade side has failed to have much impact in his district. “Their silence has been deafening,” he lamented. “Having a media campaign is one thing--but committing at the grass-roots level with workers is another matter.”

Business leaders have expended little political capital for trade initiatives since the big victories of NAFTA and creating the World Trade Organization in the early 1990s. They insist that the China issue is different, and they point to November’s U.S.-China trade deal to explain why. From toothpaste to telecommunications, professional services to pork, the agreement would ease U.S. access to China’s marketplace through such means as increased legal rights, lower tariffs and higher quotas. Chinese officials have warned that without permanent normal trade relations, they will deny the U.S. these very preferences that will be afforded most other nations.

With that in mind, the Business Roundtable plans a new wave of advertising timed for the April recess, one that will include television, radio and newspaper ads in select congressional districts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose president Donohue previously warned that legislators will oppose normal trade ties with China “at your own peril,” is devoting at least $3 million to various lobbying and grass-roots efforts.

“We’re going to spend as much as it takes to get this done,” said Myron Brilliant, director of Asia policy at the U.S. Chamber. “It’s that important an issue.”

Such efforts already have borne fruit. When Rep. Leonard L. Boswell (D-Iowa) signaled his interest in meeting with local constituents on the China issue earlier this year, the Business Roundtable seized the chance to accommodate him. Local business organizers rounded up pro-trade farmers and “one Motorola guy” for the session, which took place in a grain elevator in the southeast Iowa town of Fairfield.

“People were sitting around on feed boxes, barrels and sacks,” recalled Bill Menner, the Roundtable’s field operator in Iowa.

At the meeting, constituents expressed their enthusiasm for the U.S.-China trade deal, which would expand the quota on U.S. corn shipments from 4.5 million metric tons to 7.2 million metric tons, and slash the tariff on U.S. frozen pork from 20% to 12%. Boswell, a former farmer, had sympathized with their position. But it wasn’t until after the grain-elevator session that he came out in favor of permanent normal trade ties with China.

Says Menner, recalling the episode with some satisfaction: “He’s our Democratic success story.”