In a lengthy letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, President Clinton Monday said Congress must grant normal trade relations with China or lose out on an agreement that essentially calls for one-way trade reform. The United States gave up nothing in the agreement, said Clinton, but China agreed to "comprehensive market-opening concessions."

Clinton vowed to make NTR with China "a top priority" in the congressional session that opened Monday. To accomplish that will "draw China into a system of international rules and thereby encourage the Chinese to choose reform at home and integration with the world," he said.

"China has agreed to grant the United States significant new access to its market, while we have agreed simply to maintain the market access policies we already apply to China by granting it permanent NTR. China's commitments are enforceable in the World Trade Organization (with China as a member) and include specially negotiated rules. In the event of a violation, the U.S. will have the right to trade retaliation against China," he argued.

He also reiterated the Chinese concessions: farmers, workers and businesses will benefit, Clinton said. On U.S. agricultural products, tariffs will decline from an average of 31% to 14% in January 2004; China will expand access for bulk agricultural products, permit private trade in these products and eliminate export subsidies, said Clinton.

"We will continue to protect our interests with firmness and candor," he continued. "But we must do so without isolating China from the global forces empowering its people to build a better future, for that would leave the Chinese people with less access to information, less contact with the democratic world, and more resistance from their government to outside influence and ideas." Only the most "rigid, anti-democratic elements in China" would benefit from that outcome, he added. "Let's not give them a victory by locking China out of the WTO."

The White House and big business will be pitted against labor leaders who fear a flood of Chinese imports will destroy U.S. jobs, REUTERS reports. Business groups will spend $10 million or more on the campaign in their biggest lobbying effort since the passage of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, and labor groups plan their own campaign against the tract pact that could put Vice President Al Gore in a political bind, the article said.