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 he cause
of free trade dodged a bullet today as Senator Phil Gramm, Texas
Republican, said he would now support legislation to give the president
authority to negotiate trade agreements. The bill commits Congress
to voting up or down, with no amendments, on any deal the president's
team negotiates. It's an arrangement that recognizes the reality
that other countries are not going to make deals with us if Congress
threatens to rewrite them.
Gramm is perhaps the best spokesman for free trade in Congress.
"I'm for trade and I'm for its promotion," he told us
today. But he was resisting the House version of trade promotion
authority because he feared some provisions regarding labor and
environmental issues that were put in the bill to appease liberals.
In a mid-November letter to President Bush, Gramm and five other
senators wrote that because of these provisions, "this legislation
would constitute an unacceptable threat to U.S. sovereignty, and
an unwarranted intrusion into U.S. domestic policymaking."
The House plans to vote on the bill tomorrow. Gramm's opposition,
if continued, would almost certainly have led to a defeat. Passage
has always been a dicey proposition. Democrats are opposing the
bill, allegedly because they want tougher international regulation
of labor and the environment. (We think that this position, untenable
for a lot of reasons, is mainly a smokescreen for Democrats who
want to vote against free trade to keep the unions happy but don't
want to be seen as protectionists.) Some Republicans are opposed,
too. Some of them are driven by local protectionist lobbies. Others
are being short-sighted, toying with opposing the bill as a way
to stiff the president in retaliation for his perceived abandonment
of them on the airport security bill--or to protest the $22 billion
in unemployment benefits that Republicans have agreed to pass in
the stimulus bill in order to get Democratic support. If free-trading
Republicans peeled off, the bill couldn't survive.
But Gramm's concerns have now been addressed. The bill will no
longer require that any deal allow other countries to impose tariffs
on American products to punish our policies toward labor or the
environment. "You're never going to get a bill that's perfect,
but this one's good enough," he says.
The onus is now on the Democrats, especially those who pride themselves
on their friendliness to business and free markets. As The
Washington Post editorializes today, any such boasts will
be disproven if they vote against trade. The Democrats' remaining
objections-voiced on the facing page of the Post
by Rep. Sander Levin — are weak. If in the end House Democrats
conclude that a free-trade deal that this or some future president
makes would hurt workers or the environment, they can vote against
that deal. Voting no tomorrow means that no deal can be presented
to Congress at all. It is a vote to strangle trade talks in the
crib.
Slander
Watch
NAACP chairman Julian Bond's habit of calling conservatives "the
Taliban wing of American politics" was always offensive. After
September 11, it's obscene. But the Detroit
Free Press reported yesterday that Bond is still at it.
The remark came as Bond explained that the NAACP will work with
the ACLU against domestic-security procedures being instituted by
John Ashcroft. "He knows something about the Taliban, coming
as he does from that wing of American politics. Even before September
11, he had moved the department to the far right, making it headquarters
for the Federalist Society." (Our thanks to James Taranto,
whose "Best of the Web" feature for opinionjournal.com
alerted us to the quote.)
Who's
Running HSS
Why is a department of the Bush administration inviting conservatives
to speak and then insulting and silencing them? And why aren't there
any consequences for this behavior. Read Stanley
Kurtz's account.
Also
Worth Reading
Robert Poole on how
to fix airport security now that a bad bill's been passed.
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