NAFTA Backers Confident as Vote Nears in the House : Congress: Hard-fought battle is seen as test of Clinton’s political power and America’s leadership in world affairs. Rapid Senate approval is expected.

WASHINGTON —  A painfully divided House of Representatives appeared ready to cast a climactic vote Wednesday night in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement, ending a long and hard-fought battle that became a referendum on the fundamental changes sweeping the American economy.

As more than 200 House members took their turn at the podium to debate the benefits and drawbacks of tearing down trade barriers between the United States and Mexico, President Clinton telephoned key lawmakers to cement a come-from-behind victory that looked increasingly certain as the day wore on.

Shortly before the final roll call, Administration allies said they could not predict the exact vote. But they expressed confidence that the trade agreement would win the 218 House votes needed for ratification with a few votes to spare. Athough the pact still requires Senate approval, the Administration foresees no problems in securing final approval within several days.

The House vote was widely regarded as a key test of Clinton’s legislative acumen. A loss would have cast doubt on his ability to shepherd other Administration initiatives through Congress, and weakened his hand in dealings with foreign leaders. A victory could give new momentum to his ambitious domestic agenda and pending trade talks with other nations.

Perhaps more important, the verdict on the accord is expected to send a strong signal of U.S. willingess to continue exercising leadership in world affairs. Some supporters argued that rejection of the pact would have heralded a dangerous new era of isolation and protectionism.

“A vote against NAFTA is a vote for economic surrender,” declared House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), one of the Administration’s key allies in the congressional leadership.

House Majority Whip David E. Bonier (D-Mich.), who broke with Clinton to oppose the agreement, countered that it would be a bad deal for both the United States and Mexico. “It will cost jobs,” he said. “It will drive down our standard of living. I will lock in place a Mexican system that exploits its own people and denies them the most basic political and economic rights.”

Beginning early Wednesday morning and continuing well past nightfall, the House engaged in a pro forma, almost desultory debate intended not so much to influence the outcome as to let members explain the reasoning behind a vote that many feared would prove politically costly.

The high emotion that characterized much of the battle seemed to have been drained away by the apparent certainty of an Administration victory.

In its place was a palpable bitterness as dejected opponents angrily accused colleagues of selling their votes in exchange for promises of political support or pork-barrel rewards.

Expanding on a 5-year-old, U.S.-Canadian free-trade pact, NAFTA would eliminate most tariffs, quotas and other barriers to unrestrained commerce among the United States, Mexico and Canada over a 15-year period, beginning Jan. 1, 1994.

The agreement would immediately remove most tariffs now levied on Mexican goods entering the United States, such as the 15% surcharge slapped on electronics components manufactured south of the border. As a result, U.S. companies and their workers would be forced to compete with Mexican firms paying wages that in some cases are as little as one-tenth those paid here.

On the other side of the equation, U.S. chemical manufacturers, who now pay similar tariffs when they ship their goods to Mexico, expect sales to expand well beyond last year’s $3 billion once the accord takes effect, giving them a competitive edge over European or Asian chemical concerns. U.S. firms that make other products subject to Mexican tariffs anticipate similar benefits.

The Clinton Administration argues that the net effect of such trade-offs, with tariffs disappearing on thousands of products, will help lift Mexico out of the economic rut in which it has been stuck for generations. In turn, the jobs created by an expanding Mexican economy will fuel the growth of a booming consumer market anxious to purchase the products of U.S. factories, the Administration contends.

But the debate grew in intensity and divisiveness as the crucial House vote neared, expanding far beyond the narrow confines of trade policy to encompass the fears and uncertainties gripping the nation as it ponders its role in the shifting global economy.

“This is a debate between the future and clinging to the past,” said House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who equated the movement into an era of free trade from the Yukon to Yucatan with the U.S. program to rebuild Europe after World War II.

The seemingly rote debate that prevailed throughout the afternoon was disrupted by two brief demonstrations. Four people showered fake $50 bills imprinted “trading pork for poison” from the visitors gallery. The participants were ejected by authorities.

Throughout the day, the House visitors gallery was nearly full. In the evening, a line of people stretched 100 yards across the third floor of the Capitol all the way to the Senate, as onlookers waited their turn to witness a potentially historic debate.

The issues raised in the yearlong battle have cut across party lines, pitting Democrats against Democrats and Republicans against Republicans.

State delegations have also found themselves divided, as representatives from districts that would clearly benefit from the agreement fought for passage and those from threatened communities bitterly challenged its approval.

On one level, the debate was about economics, particularly the crucial question of jobs: Would the trade plan mean a loss of jobs to Mexico--the “giant sucking sound” predicted by billionaire Ross Perot, a NAFTA opponent--or would the creation of new markets bring with it new jobs supplying consumers south of the border?

“Are you on the side of the Fortune 500 or are you on the side of the unfortunate 500,000 who will lose their jobs?” asked House Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), who fought the pact tooth and nail, despite his leadership position, “It’s not fair to ask Americans to compete against Mexican workers who earn $1 an hour or less.”

But on another level the debate was cast as a watershed event that would measure anew America’s place in a changing global order. Would the world’s largest single economy embrace a free-trade agreement, with all the risks and benefits such pacts have posed in the past, or would it retain tariffs intended to protect struggling industries and agriculture?

The debate addressed the environment: Would the agreement reward Mexico for years of lax enforcement of environmental regulations by encouraging increased cross-border trade?

It addressed human rights too, as members complained that a nation governed for nearly a century by one political party, with each president handpicking his successor, was not the sort of democracy to which the United States should bestow the benefits of untaxed commerce.

“If we pass this NAFTA, we’ll be sending a message . . . that human rights can be bought and sold,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). “What does it profit a great nation, the United States of America, to gain a free-trade agreement with Mexico and lose its soul?”

The vote also became a test of Clinton’s leadership.

Until the last month of the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton avoided declaring whether he would support the agreement, which was negotiated by the George Bush Administration. Under pressure from Bush during the campaign to make up his mind, he said he would back the pact, but only if it included supplemental agreements protecting the environment, worker rights and threatened U.S. industries. Such side agreements were completed by the new Administration in August.

To some critics, that approach sowed the seeds for the bitter fight that threatened Clinton with a devastating political loss. The President avoided the debate for months while the side agreements were being negotiated and opponents attacked the trade plan as supporters questioned the President’s commitment.

Clinton and his aides argued after the additional issues were resolved that he had no choice, because wholehearted endorsement of the plan before it was completed would have undercut the United States’ negotiating position.

Putting an openly partisan cast on the result, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said that even with the successful vote, Clinton would “suffer some loss because there has really been a rip, I mean a serious one, among some of his most loyal supporters.”

While the debate in the House dealt with such lofty issues as human rights and such nitty-gritty ones as jobs and wages, fears of political loss underlined the members’ concerns.

Representatives from Florida and Maine to Washington and California wondered, sometimes in public, more often in private conversations, whether support for the plan would make them vulnerable next November to the wrath of voters if job losses in their districts follow implementation of the trade plan.

“Judgment day is coming. It’ll be here in a split second,” said Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), referring to the next election. “They’ll throw your butts out of here.”

But the threat drew an angry retort--from a fellow Republican.

“You, sir, have fired a shotgun of fear at me, and I resent it,” retorted Rep. Pat Roberts of Kansas.

It was the fears of job loss that fueled the angry opposition of the AFL-CIO and locked into the opposition a large bloc of votes from much of the Rust Belt, the Midwestern manufacturing zone that was devastated by the recession of the early 1980s.

But it was a concern that reached across the country.

The agreement, said California Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), “essentially treats workers of this country . . . as an afterthought.”

Some members expressed anger over the deals made by Clinton that, in their view, undercut the trade agreement by providing additional protection for some industries, rather than making them compete freely.

Such agreements were drawn up to alleviate the concerns of peanut farmers and growers of sugar beets, of owners of orange groves and tomato farmers and those who till the vast Wheat Belt of the Midwest. There was protection for the textile industry and for makers of home appliances fearful of competing with lower-cost Mexican factories.

There was the promised establishment of a North American Development Bank to begin to pay for the cleanup of the U.S.-Mexican border and a pledge of progress on the thorny issue of returning to Mexico illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

Among the concessions made to secure additional votes--in this case, that of Rep. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.)--was a pledge by Mexico to extradite a Mexican man accused of abducting and raping a young girl in Southern California and then fleeing across the border.

The vote in support of the trade plan, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in an interview, was “strictly because of the buyouts.”

Times staff writer Karen Tumulty contributed to this story.