By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Clinton signed the China trade bill yesterday, a
hard-fought victory for the White House that promises to open markets in
the communist country to billions of dollars in U.S. goods and services.
Even as he signed the bill, the president was dispatching U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to Beijing yesterday night to nudge the Chinese to complete its agreements to join the World Trade Organization.
Talks are stalled as China backpedals on details of its trade accords with the
United States and other nations.
"Our work is not over when I sign the bill. China still must complete its WTO accession agreements," Clinton said. “But when it happens, China will open its
markets to American products from wheat to cars to consulting services, and our
companies will be far more able to sell goods without moving facilities or
investments there.” Clinton was joined at the ceremony on the South Lawn by several members of the cabinet and about 50 Republican and Democratic lawmakers. The measure
passed the House 237-197 on May 24 after much arm-twisting by the White
House. It easily passed the Senate, 83-15, on Sept. 19.
Not all Republicans disagreed with the president. Not all Democrats
agreed.
"In case you’ve all forgotten, this thing was hard to pass," Clinton
joked. "This was a lot of trouble."
The measure establishes permanent trade relations with China. The United
States had to scrap its annual review of China’s trade privileges in order for U.S.
exporters to gain the benefits of China’s lower barriers.
Labor, conservative groups and human rights campaigners argued that the annual review gave the United States a chance each year to pressure China on human rights, trade practices and weapons exports.
Clinton maintained that opening markets to U.S. goods and services and strengthening U.S.-China relations would ease the way toward economic freedom for China's more than 1 billion people.
"Nothing, nothing can enhance the prospects of peace and the prospects of
a very different 21st century like having China take the right path into
the future," Clinton said.
The bill still drew controversy as Clinton signed.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said the signing ceremony should have been a wake to mourn the loss of U.S. jobs and complete capitulation of U.S. interests
to communist dictators in Beijing.
"Let’s not kid ourselves. PNTR (permanent normal trade relations) with China was never about expanding U.S. exports to the Chinese,” he said yesterday
on the House floor. “It was about access by large multinational corporations to a
low-wage, brutalized labor force of 1.3 billion people in a country with lax environmental standards."
The legislation grew out of a U.S.-Chinese agreement last fall under which China, as a condition for entering the WTO, agreed to open its markets and reduce tariffs. China must now make good on that agreement, Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, said.
"China now must measure up to its responsibilities to meet the requirements to enter the WTO," said Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Only then will this historic legislation become a reality."
After it enters the WTO, China’s tariffs on U.S.-made goods will drop from an overall average of 25 percent to 9 percent by 2005. For agriculture alone, the White House estimates that China's accession into WTO would result in $2 billion a year in additional U.S. agricultural exports by 2005.
Negotiations at the WTO's Geneva headquarters stalled recently after three weeks of discussions in which the Chinese negotiators appeared to be backtracking on agreements.
Increased competition inside China is expected to result in massive layoffs, especially in state-run companies. And trade analysts believe the reason that China is balking to adhering to some of its agreements is that hard-liners in the
Chinese government opposed are arguing that the trade concessions are too costly.
"I think reality is beginning to set in for some of the businesses in China. They realize they’re going to have to open up a lot more than they really realized," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a chief sponsor of the trade bill. He wrote a letter yesterday to Chinese President Jiang Zemin to urge him to do what’s needed to join the WTO.
"China has virtually stopped negotiations at this point," Baucus said.
"We thought it would be a slow process, but we didn’t think China would drag its heels so deeply."
