From Patrick Brogan

Washington, Friday

THE Senate's passing of the new Gatt agreement by 76 to 24 was a

sweeping, bipartisan victory for the internationalists against the

protectionists in both parties.

The House of Representatives had passed the Bill equally forcefully by

288 votes to 146. In both Houses, opposition to the Bill, like support,

was bipartisan.

President Clinton called it a triumph and had the leaders of both

parties over to the White House after the vote. They were called out

into the garden, in the dark and cold without their coats, to line up

and take the credit.

Senator Bob Dole, the Republican leader whose assent was crucial to

winning in the Senate, was suitably immodest. However, his opposite

number in the House, Newt Gingrich, who will become Speaker next month,

missed the occasion. Bipartisanship only goes so far where he is

concerned.

The House was represented by Tom Foley, who is still Speaker but who

lost his seat and his job in last month's election.

The treaty, which took 12 years to negotiate and was finally signed

last April in Marrakesh, will come into effect on New Year's Day. The

American vote was crucial. Without the United States, the treaty could

not have worked.

It is a great advance on earlier Gatt agreements, of which the last

important one was the Kennedy Round of the 1960s. International tariffs

on industrial goods have already been much reduced.

This time, members states cut farm subsidies (over the opposition of

such countries as France) and non-tariff barriers to the free flow of

service industries, patents, entertainment, recordings, and will make a

start at international regulation of banking.

The Bill was opposed by senators from farm states, who like their

subsidies, and from some Southern states which have large textile

industries. In the past 30 years, there has been a wholesale shift of

the American textile industry from New England to the lower wage,

non-union South.

Now the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia fear that the same phenomenon

will lure the business to Asia and they may be right.

The rest of the Senate argued that the national interest in more free

trade should over-ride sectional difficulties -- a point that does not

appeal to people who are about to lose their jobs.

An alliance of the far right, including Pat Buchanan who challenged

President Bush for the Republican nomination in 1992 because he thought

him too liberal, Ross Perot, the billionaire industrialist and

protectionist, and the far left, including the consumer advocate Ralph

Nader, lobbied against the Bill.