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How many votes constitute a mandate for the winner? Having won the 1960 presidential election by the narrowest of margins, John F. Kennedy rejected the argument that the country had given him no mandate. "Every election has a winner and a loser, he said in effect," wrote Theodore Sorensen in his book Kennedy. "The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear. There may be difficulties with the Congress, but a margin of only one vote would still be a mandate."
For a president, who is safely ensconced in the White House for four years, this may be true. But for a president to win approval from Congress over a piece of legislation with a one-vote margin is not the same thing.
Contrary to most forecasts, which predicted defeat, last Thursday the House gave President Bush the narrowest of victories, passing legislation that gives him greater authority to forge international trade agreements by allowing him to negotiate trade pacts with other countries which Congress could only reject or approve, but not amend.
So, by 215 to 214 Bush has the "fast track" authority he sought — that other presidents before him have had — and that early in his administration was cosmeticized into "trade promotion authority." But the "difficulties with Congress" Kennedy talked about loom large in this case.
Approval by the Senate — which will not take it up until next year — doesn't appear to be one of them. By and large, senators are more inclined to free trade than the lower chamber. But there is an election next year; what if the thin Republican majority in the House gets even thinner or even vanishes, a not unlikely event for a mid-term election? Will trade pacts negotiated under fast track authority (nobody calls it anything else) be rejected by a Democrat majority, still hurting from last Thursday defeat and egged on by the powerful labor and environmental lobbies that have been fighting against it?
And there are even deeper issues. Opposition to the bill — and not just from Democrats but from Republicans as well — was led by members who support expanded trade and in many cases have helped craft and pass every key trade bill of recent years, including those governing relations with China, Africa, the Caribbean and Jordan.
But the long-standing U.S. consensus over trade began to crumble long before Bush came to office. The first fast-track vote passed the House easily in 1974, but with the series of big trade deals completed in the early 1990s, serious opposition began to emerge. Fast track lapsed in 1994 and efforts to revive it were rebuffed in 1997 and 1998.
One reason for the collapse of trade consensus has been the economic impact of the trade deals negotiated over the past decade, including free trade with Canada and Mexico and the far-reaching Uruguay Round global trade agreement which, while beneficial to most U.S. industries, have badly hurt, with its lowering of barriers, steel, textile and other manufacturing sectors with a strong voice in Congress, both from the business and labor sides.
Those agreements have deepened the U.S.'s trading relations with countries that have much lower wages and regulatory standards. Under pressure from labor unions whose members have lost jobs to those countries, congressional Democrats have insisted that future agreements require countries to raise work-place and environmental standards. Congressional Republicans and the White House see such measures as unfair to countries that are at stage of development which mirrors that of the United States in the 19th century, when wages were low, work-place conditions were poor and environmental standards nonexistent, and can only be expected to improve if given a chance to raise their exports.
These objections have not died with the passage of the bill, particularly when it was passed by such a small margin. The important disagreement is between those who believe trade policy must be updated to address this changed landscape and those who think there is little or no need to shape the terms of trade, because more trade is always better, no matter what.
This is the division behind the dispute over how to handle labor and environmental standards in trade negotiations. Some deny the relevance of these matters to international competition, characterizing them as "social issues." Yet they are controversial precisely because of their economic content.
An alternative fast-track bill was presented by New York Democrat Charles Rangel, which set forth what he alleged were realistic negotiating objectives for both labor and environmental standards. It was based on the successful incorporation of those issues in recent accords, such as the Jordan Free Trade Agreement and the Cambodia textile and apparel agreement. The Rangel bill includes rules on the use of child labor and on the freedom of workers to associate and bargain collectively, as well as minimal environmental standards to be respected.
One irony of the conflict over fast track is that most Democrats were unalterably opposed to a bill that in fact goes a fair way to addressing their concerns. Earlier this year U.S. business groups with influence on the Republicans agreed to support the linkage of trade with labor and the environment as the only way of getting fast track through Congress, Republicans grudgingly accepted many of the provisions they had previously denounced and these are reflected in the bill the House passed.
Thursday's narrow victory sets the stage for revisiting these issues, not with new legislation but through efforts to reach disaffected lawmakers before the first trade pact negotiated under fast track hits Congress.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com