House OKs trade pacts with Chile, Singapore

The House yesterday easily approved free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore in a major victory for the Bush administration.

The pacts are the biggest free-trade deals voted on by the House since lawmakers approved NAFTA with Canada and Mexico a decade ago. Bush administration officials hope yesterday’s passage opens the door for two-way agreements with at least a dozen more countries.

“What you will see Congress voting on … is what we hope will be the first in a series of agreements,” Robert B. Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, said before the House roll calls.

Chile and Singapore would be the fifth and sixth free-trade agreements for the United States. The Bush administration would like to add Australia, Morocco, five countries in Central America and five in southern Africa in the next two years.

Mr. Zoellick also said that he would like to formally start negotiations with the Dominican Republic and the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain in 2004.

Administration officials hope the most recent pacts will add momentum to talks for broader trade deals.

Global trade talks among 146 nations at the World Trade Organization are bogging down. A hemisphere-wide agreement dubbed the Free Trade Area of the Americas also has hit rough patches.

Republican leaders see yesterday’s vote as a watershed and the two pacts as the first of several more to come.

“The Chile and Singapore [free-trade agreements] … are laying the groundwork and establishing high benchmarks for future free-trade agreements,” said Rep. Philip M. Crane, Illinois Republican, a key legislator on trade issues.

Pro-trade business leaders praised the deals yesterday.

“These agreements are state-of-the-art. They re-establish American determination to exert leadership on future trade deals,” said Thomas Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president.

Organized labor mounted an intense campaign against the deals, saying they would cost jobs.

Teamsters President James Hoffa earlier this week threatened to withhold union support from lawmakers, including Democrats, who vote for the agreements.

“You are either with the American worker or against the American worker,” he said.

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