Familiar Concerns Greet New Trade Pact

Washington Post ^ | May 12, 2007 | Peter S. Goodman

[Lorianne]

A day after the Bush administration and Democratic leaders celebrated a new bipartisan consensus on trade policy that embraces labor rights, some unions criticized the agreement while suggesting they might continue to oppose trade deals.

"The enforcement of labor and environmental standards would be left to the devices of the Bush administration, which refused for more than six years to pursue its first, modest steps to rein in China's violations of our trade rules," the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 workers in the United States and Canada, said in a written statement. So long as the Bush administration remains in power, the union said, "we will be hard pressed to support this agreement."

Several business groups, while publicly praising the deal, privately fretted about the Bush administration's accommodations -- particularly on labor rights -- to win Democratic votes in Congress for pending trade deals with Peru and Panama.

Some manufacturing groups blasted the accord as the latest development in the ongoing loss of American jobs to low-cost factories overseas.

"This deal fails to address the fundamental flaws in U.S. trade policy that have resulted in the United States losing more than 3 million middle-class manufacturing jobs," Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, said in a statement.

Taken as a whole, the response to the deal, the highest-profile cooperation between the two parties since the Democrats captured Congress in November, underscored how trade is likely to remain a volatile and divisive issue heading into next year's presidential election.