*EPF413 06/14/01
Republicans Introduce Trade Promotion Authority Legislation
(Bill will "begin the process" to approve trade authority) (680)
By Warner Rose
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have introduced legislation to provide President Bush with trade promotion authority (TPA) -- previously called "fast track" -- that the administration says is needed for the United States to negotiate new trade liberalization agreements.

Congressman Phil Crane of Illinois, chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade and a co-sponsor of the bill introduced June 13, said he hoped to see action on the legislation in either his subcommittee or in the full House Ways and Means Committee next week.

The legislation, if passed, would make it easier for the U.S. Trade Representative, acting for the president, to negotiate agreements on the trade in goods, services, agriculture, intellectual property, investment and e-commerce by requiring that the Congress, when it votes on the final accord, to either accept or reject the finished pact, without amendments and within a certain time limit.

Bush administration officials and others argue this kind of authority is needed for U.S. negotiators to get the best agreement. "The idea that a foreign country would negotiate with the United States and then the Congress would engage in a normal amending process, as you might guess, terminates any negotiations prior to really getting serious," said Congressman Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, speaking at a June 13 press conference on the legislation.

Over the next two years, the Bush administration expects to engage in major negotiations for the Free Trade Area of the Americas and for a new round of multilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization that the president hopes will be launched when the world's trade ministers meet in Doha, Qatar, in November.

Several Republican leaders at the press conference stressed that the introduction of the legislation was the "beginning of the process" of approving TPA. The legislation does not have specific provisions for including labor and environmental issues in trade negotiations, which some members of the Democratic Party, now in control of the Senate, have insisted on. A spokesman for Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, now chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the TPA legislation showed "we have a long way to go in terms of properly addressing labor and environmental concerns," according to the Associated Press. The Finance Committee will have to approve the TPA legislation in the Senate.

The proposed legislation would require that provisions of any agreement negotiated with TPA be "directly related to trade," said Congressman Crane. Under the proposed bill, "what is not permissible is to use trade sanctions against, say, a developing country to force them into compliance with an arbitrary determination as to what the environmental conditions should be there or what the labor conditions should be there," he said.

Crane said there are "other vehicles" to pursue those kinds of issues. The TPA bill preserves the president's existing authority to negotiate "side agreements" to a larger trade agreement.

The legislation would apply to trade agreements entered into by June 1, 2005, with an automatic extension of TPA to June 1, 2007 unless Congress passes a resolution disapproving the extension. The bill also expands provisions for consultations between the administration and the Congress before, during and after trade negotiations and in the drafting of the legislation to implement the trade agreement.

The last TPA authority expired in 1994. Efforts to approve the authority since then have largely floundered on disagreements over including labor and environmental provisions.

The Republican leadership in the House strongly supports the TPA bill. At the press conference, however, the leaders conceded there are both Democrats and Republicans that would vote against the legislation. "We are working to build a consensus," said Congressman David Drier of California, chairman of the House Rules Committee, which controls the flow of legislation to the House floor.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Website: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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