Bush Digs In for Authority to Negotiate Free-Trade Pact

President Bush on Tuesday vowed to intensify the fight for the right to negotiate a hemisphere-wide trade accord without congressional interference. He also argued that without free trade and prosperity democracy will never flourish in Latin America.

Looking toward the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City this weekend, Bush sought to answer critics of the free-trade efforts that have been at the center of U.S. international economic policy for the last decade.

In a speech here at the headquarters of the Organization of American States, the president said that nothing that will be accomplished in Quebec will be as important as reaffirming the goal to establish a free-trade zone from Canada to Chile by 2005.

For Bush, the summit amounts to a diplomatic coming-out party in which leaders from 33 other nations in the Western Hemisphere--all except Fidel Castro of Cuba--will be weighing the sincerity of his focus on hemispheric relations.

“All of the eyes will be on what George Bush is doing and saying: Will he move to build a partnership with the region, or is this more rhetoric?” said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank that studies U.S. relations with Latin America.

“There is some skepticism,” Hakim said, that Bush has the political clout in Washington to win congressional passage of the trade-negotiating authority.

President Clinton failed in 1998 to gain congressional support of what was then called fast-track authority, which the Bush administration has tagged “trade promotion authority.”

By either name, it gives a president congressional approval to negotiate a trade pact that the lawmakers can either approve or reject but cannot modify. It is considered extremely important because it gives negotiating partners assurance that when they complete an agreement with the president’s representatives Congress will not be able to rewrite it.

“We’re now actively working with Congress on a strategy for passing legislation granting the trade promotion authority,” Bush said. “We’ll intensify this effort when I return from Quebec, and I’m confident we’ll succeed.”

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was less sanguine. “I just think it’s too soon to say exactly how it’s going to come out. I can simply tell you that the president is committed to getting it done.”

Nor would Fleischer set a deadline for completing talks with Congress and securing a vote on the provision.

The summit has drawn the attention of interest groups opposed to lowering the barriers to trade between nations--or to doing so without provisions that strictly protect labor standards and the environment. They are concerned that lower-income countries would compete against manufacturers in developed nations by paying much lower wages--threatening jobs in this country--and ignoring environmental standards.

Briefly addressing those issues, Bush said: “There’s a vital link between freedom of people and freedom of commerce. Democratic freedoms cannot flourish unless our hemisphere also builds a prosperity whose benefits are widely shared. And open trade is an essential foundation for that prosperity and that possibility.”

Trade, he said, “applies the power of markets to the needs of the poor. It spurs the process of economic and legal reform. It helps dismantle protectionist bureaucracies that stifle incentive and invite corruption.”

By the time he gets to Quebec on Friday, Bush will have met with about half a dozen Latin American leaders. His public focus and personal interest in Central and South America have left experts in Latin American politics and government encouraged.

On the other hand, some see a dual approach at work: Bush is seeking greater cooperation on economic matters while hiring several officials from the Reagan administration and allies of Sen. Jesse Helms, the conservative Republican from North Carolina, for political positions. This, they argue, could put key positions in the hands of rigid adherents of old-line, anti-communist policies in the region.