White House, Senators Spar Over Free Trade
By JIM ABRAMS,
WASHINGTON — The administration's top trade official urged Congress yesterday to act on free trade agreements this year, but Senate lawmakers made clear that won't happen until displaced workers are better protected.
Renewing and expanding the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program "is number one," the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, a Democrat of Montana, told the U.S. Trade representative, Susan Schwab, at a hearing on trade policy. "Get that done and we can talk."
That point was pounded home by others on the panel.
Senator Lincoln, a Democrat of Arkansas, spoke of the "tremendous erosion of domestic political support for trade" and stressed that it was "very, very critical that we move forward" on TAA, a program initiated in 1962 that provides financial aid and retraining to people who lose their jobs because of foreign competition.
"I hope the president doesn't threaten to veto" proposed Senate legislation to extend the program, Senator Snowe, a Republican of Maine, said. "This is a safety net that we owe the American people."
Ms. Schwab outlined an ambitious agenda for the final months of the Bush administration, including getting Congress to finalize free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, and reaching a successful conclusion to the current round of multilateral trade negotiations, named after Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East where the trade talks began more than six years ago.
She said the administration was "fully supportive of a strong and vibrant TAA program."
The House last October passed legislation to extend TAA for five years while extending eligibility for TAA financial aid, training, and health care programs to service sector and public agency employees. It also provided tax incentives for communities trying to cope with the shrinking of their manufacturing sectors due to trade.
