President Bush signed a bill Tuesday morning in Washington giving him the authority to negotiate trade deals with foreign countries without interference from Congress, then left less than 20 minutes later for a monthlong "working vacation" at his ranch.
The legislation, along with a recently signed corporate anti-fraud bill, is one of two accomplishments that Bush will be able to cite when he is asked what his administration has done to help the stalling economy.
All presidents from 1974 on have had trade promotion authority, once called fast track, but it lapsed in 1994 and Congress would not re-enact it for former president Bill Clinton. Tuesday's signing marked a major legislative victory for Bush, whose aides worked for months to push the bill through the House and then the Senate, which approved it only five days ago.
"Five presidents before me had this advantage," Bush said at a White House signing ceremony Tuesday morning. "But since the authority lapsed in 1994, other nations and regions have pursued trade agreements while America's trade policy was stuck in park."
Under the new legislation, the president can make trade deals through 2007 that Congress can approve or reject but not change. Bush said he would begin using his authority immediately to accelerate long-stalled trade talks.
"Starting now, America is back at the bargaining table in full force," Bush said. "I will use trade promotion authority aggressively to create more good jobs for American workers, more exports for American farmers and higher living standards for American families."
Supporters of the bill, mostly Republicans, agreed with the president, saying that the legislation would move the White House from the sidelines to a central position in making trade deals that would enable the US to better compete with other countries.
The opponents of the bill, mostly Democrats, said they had worries about the effect of liberalized trade on US textile and other manufacturing workers, who might be hurt by competition from cheaper imported products or by companies that move their plants overseas to take advantage of cheaper foreign labor. Only when House and Senate negotiators agreed to include a package of subsidized health insurance and job-training benefits for workers who lose their jobs to foreign competition did some Democrats finally agree to vote for the bill.
Bush said his administration would move quickly to make trade agreements with Chile, Singapore and Morocco. In addition, he said, the US will negotiate a Free Trade Area of the Americas, a 34-nation plan first proposed in 1994 to integrate most of the economies of North and South America into a single free-trade bloc, similar in concept to the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada.
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