Washington Post | By Sebastian Mallaby
The U.S. Senate, that grandest of debating chambers, last week held hearings on how to promote trade. Don't yawn; this matters. A successful multilateral trade round could put more money in American pockets than the Bush tax cut, and it could do so without raiding resources from needed government programs. The administration sent along its top people -- its commerce secretary and its trade representative -- and the hearing room was so packed that a line of frustrated reporters had to cool their heels outside.
Presently Frank Murkowski, a venerable veteran of the Senate, had his turn at the microphone. After some worthy general statements, he got to the part of America's national trade debate that really seems to eat him. "Relative to catfish we have an awful lot of salmon in Alaska," he began earnestly. Then he launched into a disquisition about unfair competition from inferior farm-grown salmon before delivering his punch line. "I just wanted to make sure you recognize that in your negotiations. So -- farm salmon is not nearly as good as the wild salmon."
At which U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick summoned up heroic patience and said: "Sometime if I have a chance to go out and look at the wild salmon closely, I might have a better sense of the nature of it."
"When would you like to go?" Murkowski immediately demanded.
"I am already committed to Iowa in August for Sen. Grassley," the poor trade representative replied.
It's a tough job being trade czar. You whiz from Brussels to Shanghai to Geneva, then all of a sudden you're faced with an irascible Alaskan with an aquacultural ax to grind. During the course of Thursday's Senate hearing, Zoellick also had to sound concerned about molasses, imports of which greatly upset the sugar farmers who helped elect Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana; and about chicken parts, which exercise both Breaux and Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and indeed about catfish, a subject on which Lincoln proved positively passionate.
These were not Zoellick's only worries. The hearing was supposed to be about the administration's request for Trade Promotion Authority, which would restore U.S. leadership in the international trading system. But the central theme of this debate on leadership turned out to be the committee chairman's determination not to exercise any.
The chairman is Sen. Max Baucus, a mountainous Democrat from Montana. Baucus used to be a trade supporter, but the prospect of a tough election next year has sent him scurrying to the protectionists. His chief ambition is to find excuses not to move Trade Promotion Authority, without which there probably won't be global trade talks, meaning that the U.S. economy could forgo something like $2 trillion in gains over a decade. That's one seriously big carrot, but Baucus wants the anti-trade labor unions behind him in his Senate race.
Baucus's first excuse is that he'd like to move Trade Promotion Authority, yes, honestly, but there's no political support in Congress for a bill that leaves out labor rights and environmental standards. This claim is absurdly circular: The chief political obstacle to trade in the Senate is that Baucus has decided there is one. Just about every recent trade vote has passed the Senate comfortably. Until Baucus ascended to the Finance Committee chairmanship, serious trade obstructionism was confined to the House.
The second Baucus excuse is that even without Trade Promotion Authority, the United States can negotiate new trade deals just fine. On Wednesday he cited a recent free trade deal with Jordan and negotiations with Chile and Singapore. But these are hardly dramatic precedents. Trade with Jordan is tiny, and bilateral deals with smallish countries boost American prosperity hardly at all.
The truth is that Trade Promotion Authority would greatly improve the chances of serious new trade deals; and the only big breakthrough achieved without it proves why. In the absence of "fast track," as Trade Promotion Authority used to be called, the Clinton administration did negotiate China's WTO accession. But that was possible only because a kind of de facto Trade Promotion Authority applied to it. Unlike an ordinary bilateral trade agreement, which Congress can amend to death if it lacks fast-track protection, China's WTO entry offered Congress only the opportunity to vote yes or no to the idea.
The good news for Baucus is that, if senators keep inviting Zoellick to their home states, the trade representative won't have time to launch global trade talks anyway. The bad news is that at least one of his fellow committee members knows how to slice through his feeble excuses. At one point in Thursday's hearing, Baucus had the gall to propose amending Trade Promotion Authority by allowing trade deals to be filibustered. "That's not fast track -- that's derail," drawled Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff.
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