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U.S. Reps. Mel Watt, Howard Coble and Robin Hayes voted against permanent trade status for China Wednesday afternoon, fearing it will cost textile jobs in their N.C. districts.
But bipartisan support led the House to approve the measure in a hotly contested 237-197 vote.
The U.S. Senate should vote on the bill next month, and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., promised that before “the communist leaders in Beijing and their allies in the White House start popping the champagne corks,” there will be a robust debate.
“We will discuss China’s horrendous labor practices, including the use of prison slave labor,” Helms said in a statement after the House vote. “We will discuss China’s brutal suppression of religious freedom. We will discuss China’s ongoing crackdown on peaceful political dissent.”
Helms added that the Senate will bring attention to “China’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations” and “escalating threats to invade Taiwan and the threats from Beijing to use nuclear weapons against American cities if the U.S. dares to defend our allies in Taipei.”
Helms said he would not allow the Senate to “simply rubber-stamp the president’s plan.”
Helms’ Foreign Relations Committee does not have primary authority over trade matters. The Senate Finance Committee does, and it already has voted 18-1 in favor of the China trade bill.
Of North Carolina’s 12 U.S. House members, only four voted for the permanent trade status for China: Republicans Cass Ballenger and Sue Myrick and Democrats David Price and Bob Etheridge.
Coble, R-Greensboro, and Watt, D-Charlotte, acknowledged Wednesday the importance of trade with a market as large as China’s and deliberated at length on their final votes.
“(But) I cannot stand by while the Chinese flood our market with cheap textiles,” Coble said. “As the representative of a district populated with more than 30,000 textile workers, I cannot turn a blind eye to the negative consequences that increased trade with China will have on this industry.”
Coble said recent projections suggest that as many as 150,000 textile jobs could be lost by having permanent normal trade relations with China.
Some House members had described Wednesday’s vote as their most important of the session, and others had characterized it as one of Congress’ most important votes in 50 years.
President Clinton supported the proposal, which guarantees China the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets that nearly every other country in the world has. China has enjoyed this benefit for the past 20 years, but only on annual congressional votes.
Those annual votes were referred to as “most favored nation” status for China.
Watt and Coble have voted for and against trade status for China in those yearly votes, often used by opponents to attack China’s record on human rights and religious freedom.
The bill approved by the House also would put in force a landmark market-opening pact negotiated with China in November, as part of its entry into the World Trade Organization. That pact would reduce Chinese tariffs, abolish Chinese import quotas and licenses and allow foreign businesses to invest in Chinese banking, telecommunications and other companies.
Watt said the long-term implications of opening a market of 1.2 billion people to U.S. products was compelling, but it had to be weighed against the short-term impacts on the substantial number of textile jobs in his 12th District, which includes Rowan County.
It was like the question one congressman posed, Watt said. Would you vote for a job for your son in the future if it meant losing your own job today?
“It’s kind of that dilemma,” Watt said, acknowledging that long-range benefits of free trading with China are likely.
Watt said he wishes he could have voted 60-40 on this question, with 60 percent of his vote for protecting U.S. textile jobs and 40 percent for the benefits permanent trade with China will mean.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury,” he added.
Coble said it’s apparent “that in most of these trade deals, textiles frequently seem to be the chip that gets traded away.”
Coble and Watt felt heavy pressure from lobbyists on both sides of the China trade issue. Also noting a large amount of mail, telephone calls, e-mails and faxes from constituents, Coble said the “vast majority” were opposed to granting permanent trade relations to China.
“I have approved of trade with China in the past in the hopes that the Chinese would improve their trade imbalances with the U.S., but the trade deficit continues to rise,” Coble said. “I also held out hopes that the human rights situation in China would improve, but I have seen little evidence of that, either.”
Wednesday’s vote was seen as a big foreign policy victory for Clinton, congressional Republicans and corporate America — and a defeat for organized labor and their Democratic allies.
Seventy-three Democrats joined 164 Republicans in approving permanent trade status for China.
Watt said he went back and forth on the annual votes on trade relations with China, voting for it when he thought China was trying to make progress on human rights issues.
Hayes, R-Concord, spoke on the House floor against the measure, saying it did not represent a fair agreement to the nation’s textile workers, including “tens of thousands” in his 8th District.
“This agreement continues down the road of trading away their jobs to cheap products,” Hayes said.
Hayes introduced his “Fairness in Textile Trade Act of 2000” last week which provides for:
- A level playing field for U.S. textile firms “by allowing trade agreements with nations that equally open their markets to our products.”
- The imposition of “real sanctions” on companies or nations that break trade agreements
- The provision of training and health insurance benefits for workers who lose their jobs because of new trade agreements.
“I want to offer an insurance policy to our textile workers, that they will not become victims to free trade giveaways,” Hayes said.
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