Agence France Presse / Nathaniel Harrison
WASHINGTON, March 30 (AFP) - The White House said Thursday it believed it will still win Congressional support to normalize trade relations with China, despite concern the opposition to the deal was mounting.
The main economic advisor to US President Bill Clinton, Gene Sperling said: "This is a fight that we always thought would be a tough fight perhaps down to the wire, but one we expect to prevail on."
The White House wants to try and bring in the legislation before May so that introducing permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China does not become a presidential election issue.
Sperling was speaking after comments by a powerful Democratic Party leader who said Congressional momentum was building against the bill granting permanent trade privileges to China, with two thirds of the Democrats in the House of Representatives now opposing the measure.
"We certainly are talking to both Democrats and Republicans about what their concerns are, and if any of their concerns can be met in ways that would be acceptable to the board majority of support of PNTR," he said.
"There have been some issues raised on how to keep the focus on human rights and how to ensure that we have the proper stop light on those issues that so many of us find offensive."
House Democratic whip David Bonior told a press conference here earlier Thursday that roughly 140 of the 211 Democrats in the lower chamber of the US Congress were either committed to defeating the legislation or were leaning in that direction.
"We've got the momentum ... and I think we clearly have possibilities for growing," said Bonior, whose function as whip is to rally support for Democratic legislation.
On this issue Bonior was defying Clinton, who on Wednesday warned that rejecting permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China would endanger both the economy and national security of the United States.
At present, China's trade privileges are reviewed annually by Congress.
The measure will be approved or rejected by a simple majority, or 218 votes, in the 435-seat House of Representatives, where one member is an independent.
Congress must approve PNTR if a US-China landmark accord signed last November is to take effect.
Under terms of the deal, Beijing agreed to lower tariffs on US goods and to take other market-opening measures in exchange for PNTR status which means China would have the same trade privileges with the United States as those currently enjoyed by all but a handful of countries.
Washington pledged to back China's bid to join the World Trade Organization, after Beijing made clear the concessions it offered were dependent on Congressional approval of PNTR.
The administration fears that if PNTR is rejected, China will go ahead and join the WTO anyway, making the market-access measures it negotiated with the United States available to Washington's competitors, notably Canada and the European Union.
Under such circumstances, US exporters will be left out in the cold.
"There is no more important long-term economic or national security issue facing us today," Clinton said Wednesday.
"If we do not do this then the full benefits of all we negotiated will flow to other countries in the WTO but not to the United States."
But that argument was challenged by Bonior, who said a 1979 bilateral trade agreement already embraces the principle of open trade with the United States.
Bonior insisted that opponents of the measure support commercial engagement with China but object to abandoning the annual review, seeing it as valuable means of pressuring Beijing to respect human rights and core labor standards.
Sperling countered, by saying no vote on the accession of China to the World Trade Organization could place discriminatory conditions on China or any other linkage.
"That would be clearly violating the WTO and the GATT," he said adding that were linkage to occur the benefits of the WTO would be lost since GATT does not allow that.
"So we will not in any way step over that line.":
