Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 22, 1994 TAG: 9405240009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GATT is, in fact, more far-reaching than NAFTA, and just as likely to provoke opposition among interests seeking protection from globalized markets. After seven years of tortuous negotiations, the agreement was signed by representatives of more than 120 nations last month in Morocco. Now a battle - a la last year's rancorous NAFTA debate - looms, for which Clinton must immediately prepare.
Notwithstanding his preoccupations with health care, Haiti, personal lawsuits and other matters, the president must not by inattention or timidity cave in to House Democrats and others who would like to put off a vote. Congress needs to approve GATT this year, preferably this summer, before the scheduled effective date of Jan. 1, 1995.
Indeed, the new GATT is as significant a measure as anything Washington will consider this decade. It will do more to reduce international trade barriers than any previous agreement. It will extend global trade rules to financial services and software, as well as to agricultural products. It will set in place a permanent framework for mediating trade disputes, and for continuing to pull down barriers to commerce.
Far from a perfect pact, the new GATT nonetheless represents a leap forward in liberalizing international commerce, and averts the likely alternative: a massive, worldwide slide into protectionism and trade wars.
Domestic opponents are organizing, of course. Licking their wounds from the NAFTA defeat, the neoisolationists, protectionists and antidevelopment environmentalists are hungering for another chance to ignore reality. Because America's future depends on a global trading system, it's important that they be defeated again.
Consider: Job-creation in trade-related fields has grown three times faster than the rate of U.S. job creation over the past 40 years. In the past five years, exports have accounted for half the total U.S. economic growth. The revised GATT will continue momentum toward freer markets, an obvious advantage for our country.
And for Virginia. By the Commerce Department's reckoning, GATT will spur Virginia exports - thus creating jobs for Virginians - by eliminating foreign duties on many Virginia products, including paper, furniture and chemical exports. As it is now, exports add some $10 billion annually to the state's economy.
Against the benefits of liberalizing trade rules, Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a crucial ally in Clinton's NAFTA victory, voices doubts about a new body, the World Trade Organization, that would administer the updated GATT. He raises the old bugaboo of threats to national sovereignty.
Ralph Nader, making a joke out of his claim to champion consumer rights, complains that GATT would threaten labor and environmental standards, never mind the huge gains in freer trade for consumers enjoying lower prices and increased choice.
And now members of Congress are expressing worries about an estimated $13 billion loss in tariff revenues over the next five years. Never mind that GATT could help the U.S. economy grow by as much as $200 billion annually after the agreement is fully implemented.
The Clinton administration, unfortunately, has not been pursuing enlightened trade policies since its landmark victories last year in getting NAFTA approved and GATT talks completed.
It has insisted, for instance, that the so-called "Super 301" trade law - which authorizes retaliatory measures in bilateral trade disputes - remains applicable even under GATT. It has wielded this protectionist law in a trade conflict with Japan, with harmful results. Some members of the European Union, while lamenting Super 301, are now saying Europe will have no choice but to enact similar legislation.
The administration can redeem itself by giving GATT the priority it deserves. Clinton needs - right now - to devise a strategy and pursue it with enough vigor to win the battle in Congress.
by CNB