Familiar Concerns Greet New Trade Pact
Business, Labor Raise Objections

By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 12, 2007

A day after the Bush administration and Democratic leaders celebrated a new bipartisan consensus on trade policy that embraces labor rights, some unions criticized the agreement while suggesting they might continue to oppose trade deals.

"The enforcement of labor and environmental standards would be left to the devices of the Bush administration, which refused for more than six years to pursue its first, modest steps to rein in China's violations of our trade rules," the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 workers in the United States and Canada, said in a written statement. So long as the Bush administration remains in power, the union said, "we will be hard pressed to support this agreement."

Several business groups, while publicly praising the deal, privately fretted about the Bush administration's accommodations -- particularly on labor rights -- to win Democratic votes in Congress for pending trade deals with Peru and Panama.

Some manufacturing groups blasted the accord as the latest development in the ongoing loss of American jobs to low-cost factories overseas.

"This deal fails to address the fundamental flaws in U.S. trade policy that have resulted in the United States losing more than 3 million middle-class manufacturing jobs," Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, said in a statement.

Taken as a whole, the response to the deal, the highest-profile cooperation between the two parties since the Democrats captured Congress in November, underscored how trade is likely to remain a volatile and divisive issue heading into next year's presidential election.

Analysts emphasized that the deal, announced on Thursday and backed by Democratic leaders of Congress and influential figures within the Bush administration, reflected the birth of a bipartisan consensus on trade policy. The deal is meant to smooth the way for congressional passage of the trade deals with Peru and Panama and to elevate prospects for more controversial pacts with Colombia and South Korea.

The agreement was reached after six months of negotiations between the Bush administration, led by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab, and Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The announcement in the Capitol was attended by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

"In both parties, there will be people who will be unhappy," said Jeffrey J. Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "But if this agreement can lead to a strong minority of Democrats joining with a strong majority of Republicans, then you have bipartisan support for trade deals going forward."

The deal drew some labor backing yesterday. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest confederation of labor unions and a frequent foe of trade deals, praised Rangel for "the substantial progress made in improving workers' rights and environmental standards in the Peru and Panama Free Trade Agreements."

But Sweeney added that his union would "vigorously oppose" deals with Colombia and South Korea, as well as an extension of the president's so-called fast-track authority -- the right to negotiate trade pacts and submit them to Congress for a simple majority vote. President Bush's authority expires at the end of next month.

The key to the deal reached this week was the Bush administration's willingness to relent on a long-standing Democratic demand: an enforceable provision requiring that U.S. overseas trading partners ban child and forced labor, and protect the rights of workers to join unions and bargain collectively.

The administration must now win the assent of governments in Peru and Panama for the new provisions before the pacts involving those countries can be submitted to Congress. Sean Spicer, a spokesman for Schwab, expressed confidence the issue could be resolved. He noted that Peru's president, Alan Garcia, met with Schwab in Washington during negotiations with the Democrats.

"This isn't catching anyone by surprise," Spicer said.

The South Korea deal will have to be renegotiated more substantially to address American complaints that it does not sufficiently open that country as a market for U.S. cars and meat.

The most difficult deal may be Colombia. Though President Álvaro Uribe's center-right government is the Bush administration's closest ally in Latin America, it has been tarnished by a scandal that revealed ties between right-wing death squad commanders and Colombian congressmen. Last year, 72 union members were murdered in Colombia.

Colombian government officials have for weeks privately expressed doubts that a free- trade agreement was possible. But with Thursday's deal, Colombia's ambassador in Washington, Carolina Barco, said a path had opened.

"Yesterday's accord between the Republicans and Democrats was very important so that there can be a green light to move on the treaties," Barco told Bogota's La W Radio.

Correspondent Juan Forero in Bogota contributed to this report.