Concerns about China have some hesitant
By Jim Drinkard / USA TODAY
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Rush Holt, a freshman congressman in a tough re-election fight, sat at a conference table surrounded by 15 executives from an array of high-technology companies. Sony Corp. was there, as well as 3M and Corning. All were pressing one point: the importance to their businesses of Congress approving permanent normal trade status for China.
They had singled out Holt, a former Princeton physics professor, because he's one of perhaps three dozen undecided House Democrats who hold the key to the trade bill's fate when it comes up for a vote later this month. Holt listened attentively, smiling and taking a few notes. But when his turn came to speak, he startled the executives with a blunt critique.
"It's not just about how many widgets enter and leave a port," Holt said. His constituents, he said, believe trade is only part of a complex relationship with China that also involves human rights, conditions for workers and respect for the environment. The business community, he continued, seems to see China as "2 billion armpits to be deodorized."
The battle for the votes of Holt and his House colleagues will only grow more fevered as the vote, scheduled for the week of May 22, approaches. Holt has been hearing from business interests, which want the deal, and labor groups, which don't. It is, he says, the most intense pressure he has encountered in his brief tenure. He's leaning toward voting "no," but pro-trade forces say they're closing in on enough votes for passage.
The trade deal, which the Clinton administration worked out last year with Beijing, would end the current practice in which Congress reviews China's trade status each year. Instead, the communist nation would be granted normal trade status permanently. That would ease China's entry into the World Trade Organization; China has promised in return to open its vast markets to U.S. products and services.
Trade fights have become a main stage for the epic struggle between business and labor. The last act of that drama came in 1998, when labor soundly defeated a move to grant the president expedited negotiating authority, called "fast track," for trade deals. The business community was criticized for holding back in that fight and vowed not to let it happen again.
"This is an all-out effort by the business community and the agriculture community," says Scott Shearer, a lobbyist for Farmland Industries, the nation's largest farmer-owned agricultural cooperative. Passage of permanent normal trade status for China is considered a sure bet in the Senate, so lobbying has focused on the House. Among the corporate efforts:
* Farmland, based in Kansas City, Mo., is printing pro-trade messages on employees' paycheck stubs and urging workers to lobby for the trade legislation. A recent sample: "More than 30% of this paycheck depends on Farmland's ability to do international business. Farmland's owners and employees win with trade."
* The Motion Picture Association of America invited 70 lawmakers and congressional aides to its private screening room to view Lover's Grief Over the Yellow River, a critically acclaimed Chinese film never before seen in the United States. It was accompanied by an explanation of how the trade deal would double the number of U.S. films allowed into the Chinese market, to 20 a year.
* The Electronic Industries Alliance set up a booth at trade shows where attendees were urged to write their members of Congress to ask them to vote in favor of permanent normal trade status for China. In return, they received a free T-shirt. "The T-shirt is what caught my eye," said Virginia software engineer Paul Kozar, who stood in line to write his congressman on EIA's laptop computer.
"This is the biggest vote of the decade," said Dave McCurdy, an EIA lobbyist and former Democratic congressman who arranged the meeting at Armand Products Co. between Holt and the high-tech executives.
* The Business Roundtable, an organization of the CEOs of America's largest companies, is spending $10 million to push the bill. Almost all the money goes for television, radio and print ads. A round of TV spots to air during the battle's final weeks will address what the group sees as the last area of concern for undecided lawmakers: China's denial of religious freedom.
Organized labor has sought to mobilize its 16.5 million members against the deal. Labor unions say the deal would put U.S. workers at a disadvantage in the global economy and throw away the United States' main leverage to push for human rights in China.
A rally in Washington against the deal drew about 5,000 protesters last month, about half as many as organizers had hoped. Union members massed outside local congressional offices from Maine to Florida while lawmakers were at home on their spring recess. A labor-sponsored poll showed that 65% of Americans disapproved of the deal.
In addition, the AFL-CIO:
* Aired ads last week in 15 congressional districts to highlight human-rights abuses in China. In the spot, former Chinese political prisoner Wei Jingsheng argues that without the annual trade review, Chinese leaders will "feel they can do whatever they want, however they want."
* Kept up pressure on two lawmakers even while they were traveling in China on an administration-sponsored trip. During the trip, Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, received calls from union officials, who urged them to keep open minds about the deal.
Supporters of the deal emphasize its benefits for the United States. President Clinton argues that the United States gives up nothing by agreeing to permanent normal trade status for China. By the end of the month, Clinton will have met personally with nearly every undecided House member.
To woo lawmakers like Holt who are concerned with the deal's effect on human rights, the White House endorsed a bill that would set up a commission to monitor human rights in China.
Back in Princeton, Holt doesn't deny that his decision on this vote could make a difference in whether he comes back to Washington for a second term next year. His suburban district leans Republican; he won by just 3 percentage points in the 1998 election. His GOP opponent this November could be former representative Dick Zimmer, who favors the trade deal.
In separate interviews, however, both Holt and Zimmer said voters aren't paying much attention to the issue. "The corporate community has done a pretty poor job of explaining the benefits," Zimmer said. "There isn't much of a constituency for it."
Holt says he has felt some pressure from unions, which have a strong presence in New Jersey. Holt's father, Rush D. Holt, was elected to the Senate in West Virginia in 1934 with the strong backing of the United Mine Workers and its legendary leader, John L. Lewis. He lost his re-election primary six years later after a falling-out with labor.
Holt left the meeting at Armand Products unpersuaded by the high-tech executives. He admonished them that they seem to be putting economics first and counting on "trickle-down human rights" in China. "I find it distressing that corporate America has been silent on these other issues," he said.
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