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Jewish World Review June 2, 2000 / 28 Iyar, 5760
Chris Matthews
Big business played Daddy Warbucks.
"Grab your sales books, boys. This is the big one. There
are 1.3 billion human beings who haven't bought their first
toaster! What a territory."
The Entity Formerly Known as Big Labor argued the flip
side. China hands Clinton and Gore were reminded, "It's
the economy, stupid!"
Labor's argument to its once and future presidential
candidates: The more work we give those worker bees in
Beijing and Shanghai, the more drones we create in
Motown and the Bronx.
One voice spoke of an element missing in the China trade
story: the nation itself. Will trade with the United States
under prevailing conditions help or hurt the people of that
grand and ancient society, a people once so rooted in
American romantic illusion by the writings of Pearl Buck
and the heroics of our own Flying Tigers?
The voice was that of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San
Francisco. She represents many Chinese Americans in
the Bay Area and is poised to assume her party's
third-ranking position in Congress.
Pelosi spoke against permanent normal trade relations with China for the
powerful reason that it forfeits any positive U.S. role in the fight for human
rights in that country. Why should Beijing's gerontocracy care what we say
about its renowned repressions once we've made it clear, as we did last week
on the floor of Congress, that repressions will not reduce our readiness to do
business?
"I'm a free trader," she explained in her dramatic late-afternoon speech
Wednesday in the moments before the trade bill was approved.
She pushed for human rights conditions in previous one-year trade deals with
China — not to kill the deal, but to get China to make good on its deal.
"The goal was to get China to honor the commitment. The goal was not to lift
most favored nation status, but to improve our trade relationship. But China has
never complied with our trade agreements. If they did, that would make all the
difference in the world."
If those pushing the deal are so confident the old men in Beijing will loosen up,
why not trust but verify like President Ronald Reagan?
"If everybody thinks they will comply," she said in an interview after the
237-to-197 vote, "why not wait a year?"
Pelosi, front-runner to be elected Majority Whip if the Democrats win control
of the House this November, predicts that sponsors of the historic deal, a
group that includes a third of her own party caucus, will now defend it no
matter what happens to the Chinese people.
"In terms of the trade issue, Congress has spoken very clearly that China will
do whatever it wishes with impunity," she said. "I predict that the trade deficit
will soar, the human rights violations will intensify, the proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction will continue uncurbed. The only lever we had was
permanent free trade.
"I hope I will be proven
05/30/00: Bubba's escape hatches
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