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U.S. Senate Leaders Remove Obstacle to China Trade Vote
Senate Republican leaders on Tuesday resolved what had been viewed as the biggest obstacle to Senate progress on legislation to grant permanent favorable trade status to China.
Majority Leader Trent Lott and Sen. Fred Thompson announced jointly that the Senate would vote separately next month on legislation to penalize China for contributing to weapons proliferation.
In exchange, Thompson, the sponsor of that measure, agreed not to pursue it as an amendment to the trade bill.
The Clinton administration and other China-trade bill supporters feared the Senate would adopt Thompson's proposal if offered as an amendment -- and that it could torpedo the underlying trade bill.
Lott said he planned to bring up the Thompson measure on July 10, the first day after the Senate returns from its weeklong Fourth of July recess.
He said he still planned to bring up the larger China-trade bill before Congress recesses for the political conventions in August. "It is my hope that we'll do it in July and that is my intention," Lott told reporters.
Still, Lott said he was still unable to announce a date for the China trade vote.
Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle has suggested that delaying the China trade bill until September or later would be fatal to it.
Sponsors hope to keep the China trade bill free of amendments _ so that it won't have to go back to the House. The House passed the legislation in May after a bruising fight and over strong objections of organized labor, and sponsors don't want to have to refight the battle again in that chamber.
The White House strongly opposes the Thompson measure.
The China trade bill itself would grant China so-called permanent normal trade relations, allowing it the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets that nearly every other country in the world already has.
China is one of a dwindling handful of communist countries that must have its trade status reviewed and renewed annually.
The bill, a top priority of President Clinton's final year, would also allow U.S. companies to take full advantage of market-opening concessions China made in its bid to join the World Trade Organization, the Geneva based body that sets rules for world trade.
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