Congress should OK trade pacts without overregulating allies

The timing was most unusual for the early-to-bed Bush White House. At 1 a.m. Monday, in a letter dated Sunday, it formally notified Congress, which was out of town in any case, that the United States and South Korea had just reached agreement on a free-trade pact.

The wee-hours timing was to beat a 90-day deadline for the president to sign trade agreements before his fast-track trade-promotion authority expires July 1.

The pact with South Korea is being billed as the largest free-trade agreement since NAFTA, and its backers have hopes for it beyond just a projected $29 billion increase in the current $75 billion annual trade between the two countries. The White House hopes it will strengthen the U.S.-South Korean alliance in a critical part of the world, and free-traders hope it will revive the flagging Doha round of talks toward reducing trade barriers worldwide.

The two Koreas are an excellent testament to the benefits of trade. North Korea closed its borders to the outside and now its destitute people are starving; South Korea chose the path of relatively open markets and is now the world’s 10th-largest economy.

The agreement calls for the elimination or lowering of most tariffs and trade barriers within three years. It is far more controversial in South Korea than it is here. Labor groups fear loss of jobs and farm groups fear being swamped by the huge U.S. agricultural sector, and, indeed, the national staple of rice is excluded from the deal.

Congress should act promptly on this agreement and three others — with Colombia, Panama and Peru — pending. There is a worrisome trend in the Democratic Congress, a sort of backdoor protectionism, to try to write enforceable labor and environmental standards into these agreements.

There are more appropriate forums for this, and the danger is if Congress tries to use trade agreements to regulate other countries there will be no trade agreements at all. Trade is vital to prosperity, without which labor and environmental standards are meaningless.

Congress should also act to extend the president’s fast-track trade authority, the power to negotiate trade agreements on which Congress may vote only yea or nay. This is to stop Congress from its tendency, infuriating to our partners, to try to rewrite trade deals after they’ve been agreed on.

Now is the time to ratify the agreements and extend the authority because protectionism always seems much more seductive during an election year.