The Wall Street Journal / By FOWLER W. MARTIN
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was sharply criticized by members of the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday on the Clinton administration's current stance on trade policy.
Summers was appearing before the panel to defend the administration's fiscal 2001 budget recommendations.
The administration's stance -- that trade liberalization shouldn't move forward until labor and environmental issues are added to the agenda of the World Trade Organization -- was "a principal cause of the failure" of the recent Seattle WTO meeting, Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, R-Del., told Summers.
The policy is a "road map for inaction" on further steps to open foreign markets to U.S. products, he complained.
Summers gave a lengthy and somewhat tortured defense -- arguing that the administration isn't attempting to condition further trade expansion on labor and environmental issues, but rather just insisting that they should be "discussed" on an international basis -- but that didn't satisfy Roth.
"Frankly, I don't think you can have it both ways," he said. "It's just not going to work that way."
There are important labor and environmental issues that need to be addressed internationally, but not in the WTO, Roth said.
The U.S. needs to be on the cutting edge of world trade in the global market place, the Finance Committee chairman said. "We can't play politics with it, but I fear that is what's being done," he said, suggesting the administration's position is aimed mainly at pleasing key supporters of the Democratic Party, such as labor unions, ahead of the U.S. national elections later this year.
The ranking minority member of the finance panel, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-NY, then told Summers he thought "most members" of the committee would agree with Roth.
U.S. trade policy is currently in a state of "crisis," Moynihan said.
-By Fowler W. Martin; Dow Jones Newswires; (202) 862-6616 skip.martin@dowjones.com
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