In Midwest, Clinton Pushes China Trade

With support for his China trade normalization plan still wobbly in Washington, President Clinton on Friday worked the farm-and-factory forces of America’s heartland to build pressure on Congress to approve the proposal.

“It really is a 100-to-nothing agreement economically” and “an imperative national security issue,” the president said.

Touching down first in eastern Ohio’s factory belt and then at a 1,300-acre soybean and grain farm south of Minneapolis, Clinton pulled out all stops to promote pending legislation that would grant China permanent normal trade relations and end annual congressional votes on its trade status.

“If this passes, there’ll be huge new markets for agriculture, new markets for automobiles, new markets for high-tech equipment, new markets for telecommunications equipment,” he said.

In China, he noted, most human rights activists favor opening the country to increased trade, while opponents of normal trade include “the most militant” senior military officers and the chiefs of state-owned industries. Clinton said that they fear “their control will be undermined and so find themselves oddly allied with union leaders and environmentalists in the United States.”

The president said that one of the “great ironies” of the China trade debate is that “some of the most progressive people in our country are taking a position that is supported by only the most regressive people” in China.

In Ohio, Clinton met at a National Guard armory in Green Township, at the edge of the Akron-Canton Region Airport, with union officials, corporate executives, community development leaders and local officials in a round-table discussion from which reporters were excluded after he made his opening remarks.

White House spokesman Jake Siewert later described it as a spirited give-and-take, with at least one opponent, from organized labor, telling the president that she had arrived “adamant” in her belief the China trade plan should be voted down but then left only “skeptical” about it.

Later, under crystal skies, Clinton spoke to several hundred residents of the Shakopee community in the barnyard of Terry and Kitty Hauer’s farm, which has been in the family for nearly half a century. (For the backdrop, White House aides found one of the few farms located within 20 miles of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.)

With six round, metal-sided silos behind him, the president, who earlier had changed from the blue business suit he wore in Ohio to a tan sports jacket, emphasized the export opportunities the legislation would provide. In particular, reduced Chinese farm subsidies would make it easier for American farmers to sell there at competitive prices, he said.

Under the trade plan, he said, “China agrees to play by the same trading rules we do” and, if it does not, the United States would have more avenues than in the past to seek redress.

Clinton expressed guarded optimism that the administration will be able to line up sufficient support by the time the House votes on the plan during the week of May 22. Senate passage is not in doubt.

The plan would give China permanent status as a normal U.S. trading partner. Under current law, it must seek annual approval for the trade status that the United States has permanently extended to nearly all other countries. The legislation would complement China’s expected entry into the World Trade Organization.

Clinton has insisted that the measure is necessary to give American companies the same access to China’s rapidly expanding market that Japan, other Asian countries and Europe will get when China joins the WTO. At the same time, he has said, it will not force the United States to grant China greater access to U.S. markets, so American jobs are not at risk.

Critics, including environmentalists, many unions and some conservative Republicans, have contended that the measure would lessen Washington’s influence over Beijing by removing the possibility of denying favorable trade status and therefore limiting China’s sales here.

Labor leaders have argued that China shows too little respect for its workers and that China’s low wages make it an unfair competitor for high-paying U.S. manufacturers, putting American jobs at risk.