Senate to Debate China Trade but Vote Will Have to Wait

WASHINGTON —  Senate leaders are seeking to begin debate next week on the landmark China trade bill but expect to delay a final vote until September, meaning that the controversial issue would linger in Congress through the national political conventions and into the fall campaign.

The delay in the Senate, which has been snarled in partisan bickering for much of the year, has worried some Democratic and Republican lawmakers who support the legislation granting China permanent normal trade relations and fear that it could yet run into trouble if it remains unresolved for too long.

Since early this year, lawmakers and lobbyists on both sides of the issue have assumed that a broad, bipartisan majority in the Senate would embrace the China trade bill that passed the House on May 24 after a lengthy and contentious debate. That assumption still seems to hold.

But for several reasons, getting to a vote in the Senate is proving far more arduous than most proponents had expected.

For example, two influential senators, Republican Fred Thompson of Tennessee and Democrat Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, are pushing for a vote on a controversial companion measure that would prod the White House to impose sanctions if China fails to stop the proliferation of missile technology, nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction.

Others, such as Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, are urging the Senate to wrap up work on annual spending bills--always a time-consuming, painstaking task--before taking up the China trade legislation. That strategy could put pressure on President Clinton to bend on some Republican spending demands because enactment of the trade bill is one of his priorities.

While the issue is stalled in the Senate, House lawmakers voted Tuesday to continue normal trade relations with China for the next year, extending to the communist regime trading privileges with the United States that most other countries enjoy without an annual review. The yearly exercise would end if the trade legislation becomes law and China, as expected, becomes a full-fledged member of the global trading community.

The Senate Republican leadership remains convinced that the legislation eventually will pass.

“I don’t believe delay is dangerous and certainly not fatal,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said Tuesday. He added: “The headline is going to read, sometime here in the next [two months]: ‘Senate Passes China Trade Bill.’ And I don’t think there’s going to be any significant change or any way to stop that.”

But Lott, who since June had held out the possibility of finishing the bill before Congress breaks for its August recess, acknowledged for the first time that “it would be very hard to get a final vote” until September. Lott said that debate on the trade bill could begin as soon as next Wednesday and resume after the recess. He attributed the delay in part to the likelihood that opponents would seek to use every possible procedural trick to slow or derail it.

Democrats charge that other motives are at work. They note ruefully that their party is more deeply split over China trade than is the GOP and that their presumed presidential nominee, Vice President Al Gore, has taken heavy criticism from some union leaders for supporting the measure.

Organized labor, a key Democratic constituency, mounted a fierce campaign against the bill as the House vote neared. Gore is hoping to heal the party’s rifts when he accepts its nomination at the August convention in Los Angeles--a chore that could be more difficult with the trade bill still on the congressional docket.

“There is clearly Republican intransigence,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). “They want to make it as difficult on Democrats as they possibly can. But this is driven by politics, not substance.”

The House vote Tuesday offered friends and foes of China trade another chance to replay the debate that consumed lawmakers for weeks this spring amid the fierce lobbying duel between organized labor and major business interests. Opponents, led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), charged that China had done nothing since the House vote to improve its record on human rights or to defuse global or regional military tensions. Proponents replied that denying trade benefits to China would do nothing to improve those matters while inflicting serious damage on U.S.-China relations.

On Tuesday’s vote, as in previous years on similar measures, the margin was not close: 281 to 147 in favor of annual renewal of China’s trade status.

Of 211 House Democrats, 117 voted for renewal. They were joined by 164 of the 222 House Republicans. Two independents voted no and six representatives did not vote.

As they considered the issue, House members cast an eye toward the stalled Senate. Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), a key advocate of the China trade bill, said last week that senators were “playing with fire” by not scheduling a vote sooner.

“If this goes into the fall, it’s anybody’s guess what happens,” Matsui said.