Gephardt Opposes China Trade Bill

House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt says the House should not pass a bill to grant China permanent normal trading privileges with the United States.

Speaking in St. Louis on Wednesday, Gephardt said China cannot be trusted with full and permanent normalized trade status until it cleans up its act on human rights and the environent.

"I am announcing today my opposition to (permanent normal trade relations) for China this year," Gephardt said. "America should not trust the Chinese government to make progress on its own. To truly honor our values, we have no choice but to oppose granting this trade status to China."

Moreover, said Gephardt, allowing China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) "is a recipe for trouble."

Gephardt's decision comes as a setback to the Clinton administration, which has hoped to sew up normal trading relations with China as a centerpiece of a U.S. policy geared toward bringing the emerging power into the arena of global commerce, and thereby limiting its potential to threaten its neighbors - most notably Taiwan.

Gephardt did say that "nobody disputes" the U.S. policy of engaging China, but warned that permanent trading status would remove one of America's major bargaining chips.

"China imprisons any worker who attempts to start an independent trade unions … China imprisons activists, who speak out on environmental issues," Gephardt said.

But the White House shook off Gephardt's decision, which came to light on Monday, and predicted the bill would pass once the administration makes its case to other House Democrats, who have apparently been freed by Gephardt to vote their consciences on the matter.

Republicans are expected to support the bill by a comfortable margin on May 22, when House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., says the bill will come to a vote.

The issue is a politically perilous one for Gephardt and the Democrats, who are waging a strenuous battle to win back the House in the fall elections.

Organized labor is fighting the trade bill, fearing the loss of jobs. Business groups, eager to open up an enormous new market, are strongly for it. That sets up a potentially dangerous vote for Democratic lawmakers from swing districts, who might customarily rely on backing from the AFL-CIO to win difficult re-election campaigns.

Gephardt has been a critic of other trade bills in the past, arguing they didn't do enough to protect against the loss of domestic jobs or prevent environmental damage overseas. He opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, for example, although it passed with a coalition of GOP and Democratic votes. A few years later, he led the opposition to a measure to strengthen presidential authority in negotiating trade deals abroad.

Until this year, Congress has reserved the right to make an annual decision on whether to extend trading rights to the Chinese that are currently extended to almost every US. trading partner. The pending legislation would put an end to that practice in favor of a permanent grant.

Gephardt's decision puts him at odds with Mr. Clinton as well as the two major party presidential nominees for the fall election, Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, not to mention the congressional GOP leadership.

In opposing the legislation, though, Gephardt would side with the majority of his own Democratic caucus, as well as virtually the entire House Democratic leadership and organized labor.

One Democratic supporter of the bill, Rep. Bob Matsui, D-Calif., recently predicted that as many as 70 or 80 Democrats would wind up backing the measure. By some estimates as many as 150 Republicans out of 222 in the House will vote for the measure. That would be enough to put it over the top.

Passage in the U.S. Senate is seen as a foregone conclusion, and the House therefore is the remaining question mark.

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