U.S. Brings Mixed Message to Asia Forum --- Clintonites Push Free Trade but Urge Some Restraint
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is delivering a mixed economic message to Asia this week: Boost your ailing economies through trade liberalization, but don't export so much that it hurts U.S. companies and their workers.</br></br>And the trade message is bound to be diminished because of President Clinton's absence from a leaders' meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday because of the Iraqi confrontation. Vice President Al Gore will be attending in Mr. Clinton's place.</br></br>"If I were still in the administration, I'd be throwing up over this issue," Robert Litan, a former Clinton economic official who now directs economic studies at the Brookings Institution here, says of the contradictory trade signals. "As a free trader, it would make me sick to my stomach."</br></br>Many of the president's advisers also have heartburn managing fallout from the Asian financial crisis. At the same time that Vice President Gore will be lecturing Asian leaders to cut tariffs and reform their economies, the Commerce Department is helping the U.S. steel industry to fend off Asian imports. Later in the week, if the Iraqi crisis ebbs, Mr. Clinton plans to fly to Japan and South Korea, in part to press the steelmakers' complaints.</br></br>The administration's economic officials argue that unless they can protect American workers from surging imports caused by Asian countries anxious to boost their economies, congressional support for easing trade barriers -- already tenuous -- will collapse. Even though such efforts undermine U.S. free-trade proselytizing, the administration says it has no alternative.