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.
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