Senate Girds for China Trade Debate

The Senate on Tuesday launched what promises to be a marathon debate on granting China full and permanent trade relations as an odd coalition of liberal and conservative lawmakers sought to derail the measure.

The trade bill, a top priority for both President Clinton and the GOP congressional leadership, passed the House in May and is widely expected to win Senate approval as early as the end of next week.

But first, the bill’s backers will have to overcome roadblocks expected to be thrown up by Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), two politicians who rarely find themselves on the same side of any issue. Their strategy is to load the bill up with amendments that would shunt the legislation back to the House and perhaps jeopardize final passage as Congress rushes to adjourn in early October.

Wellstone is seeking amendments that would underscore China’s poor record on human rights, religious freedom and labor standards. Helms has been critical of Beijing’s military expansionism and has spoken favorably of legislation proposed by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.)--possibly as a trade bill amendment--that would prod the United States to act to stop Chinese proliferation of nuclear weapons.

At stake, say trade bill opponents, are U.S. national security and moral principles in dealing with the authoritarian Communist regime in Beijing.

“There’s no question that giving permanent, most favored nation trade status to China may advance the business interests of various sectors in the U.S. corporate community,” Helms declared during Tuesday’s opening debate. “But the Senate . . . must not confuse business interests with the national interest of the American people.”

The debate, which began as the Senate returned from its summer break, marks the final stage of a legislative drive that earlier this year drew an all-out lobbying blitz by business interests that favor the bill and labor unions that oppose it.

The trade bill would end the two-decade practice of yearly reviews of China’s trade status with this country. Normalized relations have always been approved--even following the bloody 1989 crackdown on Chinese dissidents in Tiananmen Square--but only after members of Congress have had their chance to bemoan the excesses of the Beijing regime. The annual reviews have become a point of diplomatic friction between the two countries and are now considered an obstacle to implementation of an agreement reached last year to lower Chinese trade barriers to U.S. products.

The Clinton administration negotiated that agreement with the aim of paving the way for China’s entry into the global trading community. Union leaders, representing a key Democratic Party constituency, charged that the administration failed to take adequate steps to safeguard against the loss of American jobs to a massive, and easily exploited, labor market in the world’s most populous nation.

But a sizable minority of Democrats joined with Republicans in a pro-trade coalition in the House to deflect such arguments and pass the trade bill. The same political dynamic prevails in the Senate, where free-trade policies are even more strongly favored.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), a champion of the trade bill, acknowledged that China’s record on human rights, weapons proliferation and other issues posed a problem for U.S. policymakers. But he told his colleagues Tuesday that trade with China could moderate Beijing’s actions.