US trade battleground

Protests greeted trade negotiators in Seattle

By BBC News Online's Kevin Anderson in Washington

A huge battle over the future of free trade is shaping up in the United States.

At the centre of the controversy is the question of China'a admission to the World Trade Organisation.

The United States government negotiated a deal with China in November, in return for improved access to Chinese markets for US firms.

President Clinton: fighting for free trade

But now Congress has to vote on the issue of giving China permanent normal trade relations, in effect endorsing this agreement.

Organised labour and environmental groups are lining up against the deal, claiming that it would reduce the leverage the US can bring against human rights and labour law violations in China.

President Bill Clinton is a vocal supporter of globalisation but is finding it difficult to chart a course for not only freer but also fairer trade.

Free trade test

Labour, environmental and human rights groups are increasingly seeing the administration as neglecting their concerns in favour of trade and global economic interests.

And 'the debate on China-WTO ascension is raising these issues starkly,' said Sherman Katz, the director of the International Finance and Economic Policy Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

The vote on permanently normalising trade with China is seen as a critical vote by the administration and those hoping to balance trade with other concerns.

And the Clinton administration is going all out to win that vote, mobilising former Presidents Bush, Ford and Carter to support the deal.

But many members of his own party, including the Democratic leaders Richard Gephardt and David Bonior in the House of Representatives, oppose the China trade deal.

The Administration is backing a compromise proposal from Michigan Democrat Sandy Levin, to set up a commission to examine China's compliance with trade legislation.

But it is also being forced to rely for support on Republican Tom DeLay, one of President Clinton's fiercest opponents in the impeachment debate.

In defence of globalisation

Mr Clinton's policy line has been consistent about global trade and financial institutions.

 'I believe a strong, properly constructed global trading system is good for all the nations of the world,' Mr Clinton said during a speech last year.

'We can expand the circle of opportunity, share the promise of prosperity more widely than ever, and in so doing also help to bring down walls of oppression in other countries. We can, in short, put a human face on the global economy,' he said.

But Mr Clinton has also called for greater participation of labour and environmental groups in trade negotiations, most notably during the abortive trade negotiations in Seattle in December which drew thousands of protestors onto the streets.

And in the debate on granting China permanent normal trading relations, 'labour has real concerns, and the administration says that it shares these concerns, on the freedom of labour to organise and an end to child and slave labour,' Mr Katz said.

At present, Congress reviews China's trade status each year, and pressure groups see it as an important way to keep China's feet to the fire on human rights, labour and environmental issues.

Fair trade or foul?

But pressure groups say that Mr Clinton's promises of fairer trade and a human face on the global economy are beginning to ring hollow.

'He talks a good game about making trade greener and bluer, but he has done very little. His contribution has been to throw up smoke screens that confuse the debate,' said Dan Seligman of the Sierra Club.

On trade, Mr Seligman says he has a hard time distinguishing Mr Clinton from conservative icon Ronald Reagan, except on a rhetorical level.

'Clinton has made statements on the environment, but he has delivered precious level,' Mr Seligman said.

Trade policy has entered a whole new arena under Mr Clinton, he said, adding that trade policy is no longer just about trade.

'It is not about reducing tariffs. It is a global straightjacket on national regulations,' he said.

In the name of freer trade, the US clean petrol programme has been undermined, protections for sea turtles have been attacked and weakened and international environmental treaties have been undermined, he argued.

The complexities of trade

The difficulty is that while Mr Clinton has expressed a desire to include environmental and labour groups in international trade and economic policy negotiations, he has yet to achieve this increased participation, according to trade policy analysts.

  In a press conference a month before the WTO ministerial in Seattle, Mr Clinton said that he supported allowing these groups to take part in trade talks, but in Seattle, they were on the streets, not at the negotiating table, said Jacob Park, a fellow at the University of Maryland.

  Mr Clinton is trying to chart a third way, but the complexities of the issues will make it difficult to build consensus.

For President Clinton to add environmental concerns and labour and human rights to the negotiations might make new trade pacts almost impossible to negotiate, Mr Park pointed out.

'It would basically saddle (US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky or (Secretary of Commerce) William Daly with impossible tasks,' he said.

New global institutions

But policy analysts and legislators are still undecided on how to address these concerns.

'It is a false economic choice to say, either we fully enjoy benefits of trade and all of human and environmental costs or we deny ourselves benefits. The administration thinks there should be ways to address these concerns separately,' Mr Katz said.

But he along with several policy analysts and legislators in the US believe that the WTO might not be the right place to address environmental, labour and human rights issues.

He said that existing multi-lateral institutions to deal with these issues, such as the International Labour Organisation, do not have much teeth.

He suggested possibly that maybe new institutions such as the ones created by multi-lateral environmental agreements might be better suited to handle these issues than the WTO.

But the danger may be that, by the time these are created, the political momentum against free trade has become unstoppable.