3 trade pacts win approval of Congress

WASHINGTON — Congress passed three longawaited free-trade agreements Wednesday, ending a political standoff that has stretched across two presidencies. The deals saw bipartisan support at a time when Republicans and Democrats are divided over the role that the government ought to play in reviving the sputtering economy.

The deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama are the first trade agreements to pass Congress since Democrats broke a decade of Republican control in 2007.

All three agreements cleared both chambers with strong Republican support. Just one day earlier, Republicans had prevented action on President Barack Obama’s jobs bill.

The passage of the trade deals is important for its foreign-policy value in solidifying relationships with strategic allies. The economic benefits are projected to be small. A federal agency estimated in 2007 that the impact on employment would be “negligible” and that the deals would increase gross domestic product by about $14.4 billion, or roughly 0.1 percent.

The House voted to pass the Colombia measure, the most controversial of the three deals because of concerns about the treatment of unions in that country, 262-167; the Panama measure passed 300-129; and the agreement concerning South Korea passed 278-151. The votes showed a clear partisan divide, with many Democrats voting against the measures. In the Senate, the Colombia measure passed 66-33, the Panama bill succeeded 77-22 and the South Korea measure passed 83-15. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted against all three measures.

The House also passed a measure to expand a benefits program for workers who lose jobs to foreign competition by a vote of 307-122. The benefits program, a must-have for labor unions, passed with strong Democratic support. The Senate had previously approved the measure.

ARKANSANS ALL ABOARD

The trade deals were backed by all four House members from Arkansas.

“I think we need to produce jobs right now. This thing will produce 250,000 jobs according to the president’s numbers, and we agreed with those,” said Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Rogers. The agreements “are vital to, particularly, the ag community that I represent and to other business interests that need to have access to these markets.”

Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat from Prescott, said the agreements would be particularly helpful for Arkansas and states with similar agricultural industries.

“Arkansas crops like rice, soybeans and cotton and Arkansas-manufactured goods can now be exported to and sold in more world markets, increasing our state’s GDP and putting more people back to work here in Arkansas,” Ross said. “We’ve got to boost American manufacturing and agriculture to get our economy back on track, and that’s why I supported these three trade agreements.”

Rep. Rick Crawford said he was pleased that all three trade pacts passed the House. “These agreements will provide a level playing field for American exports and will be particularly important for 1st District ag producers,” the Republican from Jonesboro said. “These agreements are a great example of how Washington can find areas of agreement to help grow our economy and help Americas job creators through the opening of new markets.”

Tim Griffin, a Republican from Little Rock, said he “was proud to support these three export agreements because more exports means more jobs — for Arkansas and the entire country.”

He added: “When job creators have access to new markets, they can hire additional employees and expand their businesses here in the United States.”

Arkansas’ U.S. Sens. John Boozman and Mark Pryor said they also supported the deals when the Senate voted.

“These have been a long time coming,” Pryor, a Democrat, said, adding that the negotiations began during the Clinton administration and were finalized during the Bush years.

“We have a lot of exporters in the state who are going to benefit,” Pryor said, noting that 1,600 Arkansas companies export products. “Farm Bureau in Arkansas estimates that this will add about $56 million a year in exports to Arkansas’ economy, and that’s about 500 new jobs that will be created. So these are jobcreation measures.”

Boozman, like many Republicans, said White House inaction caused delays.

“My colleagues and I have been pushing for the president to send these fair-trade agreements over to us for ratification for more than two years,” he said. “The Panama, South Korea and Colombia pacts are a perfect example of where both sides can find common-ground to stimulate our sluggish economy. With that in mind, it is difficult to understand how these trade agreements languished on the president’s desk for that long, especially in light of our current economic situation.”

SUPPORT ANGERS UNIONS

Proponents of the trade deals, including Obama, Republican leaders and centrist Democrats, predicted that they will reduce prices for American consumers and increase foreign sales of U.S. goods and services, providing a much-needed jolt to the sluggish economy.

“At long last, we are going to do something important for the country on a bipartisan basis,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader.

However, Obama’s support for the measures has angered parts of his political base, including trade unions, which fear job losses to foreign competition.

Many Democrats took to the House floor Wednesday to speak in opposition to the deals.

“What I am seeing firsthand is devastation that these free-trade agreements can do to our communities,” said Rep. Mike Michaud, DMaine, who once worked in a paper mill.

Both chambers raced to approve the deals before a joint congressional session today with the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak.

The revival of support for the deals, originally negotiated by the Bush administration five years ago, comes at a time when both conservative Republicans and the Occupy Wall Street protesters have taken anti-trade positions, albeit for different reasons. In a debate among Republican presidential candidates Tuesday night, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, accused China of manipulating the value of its currency to flood the U.S. with cheap goods, while populist protesters oppose the trade agreements because of the potential for American job losses.

Obama cited similar concerns in criticizing the agreements during the 2008 presidential campaign, but he later embraced the deals as a key part of his agenda to revive the economy. To win Democratic support, the White House reopened negotiations with the three countries to make changes demanded by industry groups and unions, and insisted that the expansion of benefits for displaced workers be tied to passage of the trade agreements.

The benefits program was expanded in 2009 to include workers in service industries as well as manufacturing.

The compromise negotiated this summer between the White House, House Republicans and Senate Democrats preserves most of the funding for the program.

SMALL MARKETS

Increased protections for U.S. automakers in the South Korea deal won the support of traditional opponents of trade deals, including some Midwestern Democrats and the United Automobile Workers union. But scores of Democrats opposed the deal with Colombia, because they said it did not do enough to address the murders of dozens of union organizers in that country.

“Trade agreements should not be measured solely on how many tons of goods move across the border,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.

Economists generally predict that free-trade agreements, which eliminate tariffs and other policies aimed at protecting domestic manufacturers, benefit all participating nations by creating a larger common market, increasing sales and reducing prices. But such deals aren’t great for everyone, as workers lose well-paid jobs to foreign competition.

The White House and Republican leaders said that the three agreements would provide a big boost to the lagging U.S. economy and put people back to work.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hailed the deals Wednesday as an important victory for American foreign policy. And, she said, she expected that the South Korea pact alone would create 70,000 American jobs. “By opening new markets to American exports and attracting new investments to American communities, our economic statecraft is creating jobs and spurring growth here at home,” Clinton said at a Washington event.

But the U.S. International Trade Commission, a federal agency that analyzed the deals in 2007, reported that economic impact would be minimal because the three countries combined represent a relatively small market for U.S. goods and services.

The modest projected increase in demand will come mostly from South Korea, the world’s 14th-largest economy and the No. 7 U.S. trade partner, which will join a short list of developed nations that have free-trade pacts with the United States, alongside Australia, Canada, Israel and Singapore.

The commission predicted that U.S. farmers would benefit the most, because of increased demand for dairy products and beef, pork and poultry. Conversely, it predicted that the pacts would eliminate some manufacturing jobs, particularly in the textile industry.

Opponents, including textile companies, said that the deals would harm the economy by undermining the nation’s industrial base. They argued that South Korean companies would benefit much more than American companies because they were gaining access to a much larger market.

These are the first deals to pass Congress since the approval of an agreement with Peru in 2007. The Bush administration had won approval for trade agreements with 14 countries before the Democrats regained Congress in 2008, but it was then unable to gain traction.

Information for this article was contributed by Binyamin Appelbaum and Jennifer Seinhauer of The New York Times; and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.