By JIM ABRAMS The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (June 21) - The White House is pressing its case to Congress that President Bush should have unfettered authority to negotiate new regional and international trade pacts.
Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick are scheduled to argue that position before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, a day after Bush criticized opponents who want to add labor and environmental conditions to his ''fast track'' trade authority.
''There are some who want to put codicils on the trade promotion authority for one reason: They don't like free trade,'' Bush told the Business Roundtable, an association of corporate executives. ''They're protectionists and isolationists and we must reject that kind of thought here in America.''
Trade promotion authority allows the president to negotiate new trade deals that Congress can reject or approve but not amend. Every president has had enhanced authority since Congress began granting it in 1974.
But President Clinton's trade authority expired in 1994 and Congress, partly because of Democratic concerns over the labor and environmental issues, failed in several attempts to renew it.
In a first day of hearings on trade authority, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he feared the gap on the environmental and labor question was widening.
''I must confess to increasing pessimism'' as to whether Congress will approve that authority this year, he said Wednesday.
Most Republicans say that worker rights and protecting the environment should be dealt with separately from trade negotiations, and last week House Republicans introduced trade authority legislation that does not mention those issues.
At Wednesday's hearing, Baucus and two Democratic leaders on trade issues, Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan, rejected Bush's argument that their side was against expanded trade.
''Some of us believe that we can do these things and protect certain values that are not just American values which we're so proud of, but international humane values,'' Rangel said.
Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said he was working with Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., on legislation they hoped would find a middle ground on the trade issue.
Baucus said that while consensus was still possible, ''no bill is preferable to a bad bill. If that means working beyond this year, I believe we must take the time to do it correctly.''
He noted that President Reagan vetoed a fast track bill in 1986, the year the Uruguay Round of trade talks was launched, and that a U.S.-Jordan free trade bill, which contains labor provisions, was completed by the Clinton administration without fast track authority.
Passing legislation this year would give the president a freer hand when the World Trade Organization launches new trade talks this year. The United States is also now involved in negotiations for a Western Hemisphere free trade zone.:
