Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mobilizing support for one of President Clinton's top economic objectives, the White House today released a letter signed by 148 economists -- including 13 Nobel laureates -- endorsing China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
Bringing China into the Geneva-based WTO, which sets the rules for global trade, would "raise living standards in both China and its trading partners," the economists said.
"By acceding to the WTO, China will open its borders to international competition, lock in and deepen its commitment to economic reform and promote economic development and freedom," the economists said in what they said was an open letter to the American people.
In addition to the Nobel laureates, the signers also include nine former chairmen of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The House has set during the week of May 22 on a trade bill that would extend to China the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets enjoyed by almost every other U.S. trading partner. China already has this access, but it must be renewed annually. The bill would end these annual reviews and ease China's entry into the WTO.
Business groups and open-trade lawmakers support the measure, but organized labor, environmental groups and some human rights organizations do not want to give up the leverage they contend they have over China with the annual reviews.
The Nobel laureates are Kenneth J. Arrow and William F. Sharpe of Stanford University, Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Robert C. Merton of Harvard, James Tobin of Yale, Franco Modigliani, Paul A. Samuelson and Robert M. Solow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert E. Lucas and Merton H. Miller of the University of Chicago, John C. Harsanyi of the University of California at Berkeley, Lawrence R. Klein, University of Pennsylvania, and Herbert A. Simon, Carnegie Mellon University.:
